


The Cause Sanguine

by glasslogic



Series: The Cause Sanguine [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Bottom Dean, Bottom Sam, Grief/Mourning, Hunter Dean, Hurt Dean, M/M, Soulmates, Top Dean, Top Sam, Werewolf Sam, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasslogic/pseuds/glasslogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is lonely and depressed following the death of his father in a hunting accident. Guilt and grief are causing his life to spiral out of control, so he takes a rare moment of sobriety to walk away from everything and move to a remote cabin in the wilds of Montana. But it’s a very different world up there for him than the town-to-town drifting he has known all his life. Overhearing gossip one night in a local bar, he gets into an argument over the reality of werewolves and stumbles out into the woods in an ill-advised attempt to prove his point. But things never go smoothly for Dean, and what he finds changes everything he understands about hunting, his father, and even his own purpose in life. Dean has seen and done a lot in his time on the planet, but nothing has ever prepared him to navigate the strange roads of a relationship with someone who is only human three nights a month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cause Sanguine

  


 We humans fear the beast within the wolf  
because we do not understand the beast within ourselves  
                                ~Gerald Hausman

** Prologue **

  
**~1989~**  
  
Later, when he was asked, Dean would say it was the creak of the front door opening that dragged him from the depths of his fevered sleep and sent him padding through the cold towards the kitchen.  
  
But it was really the crying.  
  
The sound should have been muffled by the closed bedroom door and the thick wooden walls of the cabin John had borrowed from his old mentor, Sam Trellis. And by the quilts and blankets Dean had pulled up around his ears as he nested on the sagging mattress and sweated out a bad turn with the flu; all the other thumps and scuffles as John moved through the house were. But the crying sliced through everything. The moon was full and bright in the night sky, its light streaming in through high, narrow, horizontal windows as he crept out of his bedroom to investigate.  
  
On the counter in the kitchen sat a boy, somewhat younger than his own ten years. His hair was a tangled mess and tears streaked through the dirt smudged on his face. He was dressed only in a t-shirt Dean recognized as his dad’s; it hung on his skinny frame like a tent and pooled around his hips on the chipped Formica of the countertop. A blanket Dean recognized from the backseat of the Impala was draped over his shoulders. One of the boy’s legs was oddly angled and loosely wrapped in an old towel. Blood stained the fabric and dripped to the floor in slow, heavy drops.  
  
“Hi,” Dean said awkwardly.  
  
The sharp little chin jerked up and Dean found himself staring into the most striking pair of eyes he had ever seen. Hazel, with yellowish flecks... but it was the personality he could see looking out of those eyes that made him take an involuntary step forward.  
  
A low growl rumbled out of the shadows and he jumped, spinning to face the huge grey _wolf_ that was slinking towards him from the doorway. Dean looked around frantically but there was nothing in reach he could use as a weapon, and the wolf could certainly take him down before he could run for anything. He was still frozen in indecision, trying to figure out how to get himself and the kid to safety, when the boy on the counter hiccupped and then gave a low warbling whine. The wolf stopped advancing. It sat back on its haunches and seemed to be _thinking_ about the situation. Dean wanted to yell for his dad, but he was afraid to startle the animal into action. He backed up until he could see both the boy and the wolf at the same time.  
  
Tears were still dripping down the smudged face, but the child reached out for Dean with one blood-smeared hand. Dean met his eyes again and felt that same pulling sensation. The wolf was all but forgotten as Dean extended his own hand and tangled their fingers together. It felt... right. A second later, the strange moment was broken as a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Dean pulled free and looked up into his dad’s lined face. John ruffled his hair gently.  
  
“Back to bed with you, kiddo.”  
  
Behind his dad, another man was standing. Dressed, as the boy was, in some of his father’s spare clothes. He had an odd stillness to him, and there wasn’t anything Dean could understand in his gaze.  
  
“Dad?”  
  
“Nothing to worry about. But it’s past time for you to be asleep.” Dean recognized the command in his father’s voice and he let his dad usher him back down the hallway to his bedroom.  
  
“I don’t want to see you up again tonight, Dean.”  
  
Dean nodded obediently. But he could hear the crying in the kitchen again.  
  
“Dad?” he called, before John could close the door again. His father paused. “Will he be okay?”  
  
John smiled. “He’s going to be just fine. Got his leg caught in a mess of a trap. You don’t need to worry about him; just get some rest.”  
  
Dean pulled the blankets back up over his head, and the pillows too, and stayed that way until the exhaustion of his illness carried him back to sleep.

  
  
**Chapter One**

I left my anger in a river running highway 5  
New Hampshire, Vermont, bordered by  
College farms, hubcaps, and falling rocks  
Voices in the woods and the mountaintops  
                               ~ _Jonas and Ezekiel_ , Indigo Girls

**~2004~**

Dean ducked another bar stool and flipped the thug who threw it a rude gesture. He opened his mouth to mock the guy for being a loser, when a fist caught him across the jaw and he reeled into the wall. Sliding down onto his ass, he took stock of the situation and decided that there wasn’t anything else to be gained in the chaotic free-for-all the bar had become. Mostly because all the liquor he had spent the past few hours swallowing was threatening to make a dramatic reappearance.  
  
He tried to stand up, but gravity was stronger than Dean remembered. He fell twice before he decided he wasn’t too good for crawling, and bushes were better for vomiting than wooden floors. The cold air outside was like being slapped in the face, and after a few more tries he managed to stand enough to stagger down the street to his motel room. The carpet was more comfortable than he thought it would be; the dust and hair and debris of a thousand unnamed previous tenants only gave it more padding as he closed his eyes for a moment. He promised himself he would get up as soon as the room stopped spinning...  
  
Sunlight was torture seeping in through Dean’s eyelids when he roused again. His mouth tasted like an open grave and he felt like he’d been beaten. The sudden vivid recall of a pool stick catching him in the kidneys made him groan and curl into a ball, and the noise he made caused him to whimper and curl even tighter. He passed back out after that, but somehow in his hung-over misery managed to crawl onto the cool tile of the bathroom, because there’s where he woke up hours later.  
  
The sink was convenient to lean on as he hunched over it and splashed cold water on his face before peeling out of his disgustingly filthy shirt. Dean looked up to meet his own bloodshot eyes and dull pallor. One of his eyebrows was split and his lip too. Dried blood crusted the wounds, and both his face and torso were colored with layers of bruises. A messy line of stitches closed a shallow stab wound over his left hip gained in a brawl he had started a few days earlier, and one blow to his shoulder had been so hard he could still see an imprint of the guys ring. A collection of pointless wounds and injuries gained defending nothing more important than his pain and his pride.  
  
Dean spit into the sink and from the way his mouth felt, was distantly surprised not to see a tooth come out in it. He took a deep breath and hung his head. Pickling his liver and putting the fear of Dean Winchester into the hearts of barflies throughout the Midwest wasn’t going to accomplish anything except to land him in his grave before the year was out.  
  
He ripped the crinkly plastic off of one the cups on the sink and filled it with tap water. Through the doorway he could see his duffle bag lying where he had kicked it. The zipper was undone and its contents were spilling out on the carpet. Among the collection of filthy clothes and weapons he could see a battered manila envelope. Dean’s fist tightened on the plastic cup he had been drinking from until it crushed in his grip. His name was written neatly across the front of the envelope in heavy black ink, like an accusation. It wasn’t meant that way, but he couldn’t see those perfect block letters and not feel a desperate need to find some whiskey. Couldn’t see them as anything but a reminder that when his dad had really needed him, he’d been a thousand miles away chatting up coeds in a college dive. When his dad had gone into that house without back-up, he’d been trying to charm some random girl into his motel room. And when his dad lay dying on the filthy floor of a house twenty years abandoned, he’d been twisted in cheap cotton sheets enjoying the results of a different kind of hunt.  
  
He hated himself for that. And he hated his dad for not calling him in before taking that job on alone. His dad had already suffered for the mistake, and Dean had thrown himself into his own form of punishment.  
  
But three months of burying himself in a bottle trying to drown his self-loathing was two months, three weeks, and six days longer than John would have tolerated. It seemed a poor sort of memorial to the man to be indulging in behavior he would have abhorred out of grief over his death.  
  
On the edge of sober for the first time in weeks, Dean mostly just felt tired, and empty. He dropped the mangled plastic into the trash bin and went to pick up the packet Bobby had forwarded to him within days of hearing of John’s death. Time to see what was inside.  
  
He had to move on.

~~~~~~~

“Yeah, Bobby. I’m there now.”  
  
Dean peeked out the window into the yard, still white and silent with a blanket of snow.  
  
“No, it’s in pretty good shape for having stood empty all these years. Looks like a branch came through a window awhile back. The overhang seems to have kept most of the moisture out.” He listened a moment and rolled his eyes. “I said _most_ of the moisture, not all of it! Of course it needs a lot of work.” Dean scuffed at a moldering pile of leaves blown against a baseboard, sighing when moving them aside took part of the wall and the floor out as well.  
  
“I’ll maybe have to replace some planks. Well, yeah. There’s a few other things; the window, some shingles, maybe the overhang, some fence railing, the porch is weak in a few places, some of the walls need work. There might be a hole in the roof where the tree hit it. Possibly one on the other side too. Looks pretty sound otherwise though.” A pause. “Why are you laughing at me?”  
  
He leaned against the kitchen counter, listening patiently and eyeing a bird’s nest of top of the hand carved cabinets. “I don’t have to pay anything; the funds are already in place. Apparently it’s set up in some kind of trust. Local management. No, it was something Samuel set up when he left the cabin to Dad. No, I don’t know what Dad did for him, must have been something big though, this is kind of a sweet deal. I don’t care about the state of the place! The back bedroom looks intact and I needed something to do anyways.” Dean listened and frowned. “What do you mean ‘do I know what I’m doing?’ I can fix a car, I can fix a roof. You think there is anything more complicated in carpentry than in an engine rebuild?” He pulled the phone away and gave it a disgruntled look while Bobby laughed at him again, three states away. He pressed it to his ear again after a moment. “You about done? Yeah, I think changing the subject would be good.”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “The town’s fine, Bobby.” He picked up a couch cushion and dropped it when a mouse fell out of the bottom and scrambled away. “Well because no one shot at the car or crossed themselves when I ran in to get some groceries, so yeah -- on the basis of that I think it’s a nice place. No, I haven’t been up here since I was a kid. We used to come up here every year or so, hang out for a few weeks. Do some hunting and fishing.” He opened the refrigerator and wrinkled his nose at the musty smell, but at least it was empty. “I don’t know, Bobby, ten maybe? Eleven? Something like that. Dad just didn’t want to come any more.” He paused, one hand still on the fridge door as the memory of teary hazel eyes and a child’s plaintive crying echoed in his memory. “I really don’t remember why.”  
  
Dean closed the fridge and walked back to the window. He tugged at one of the curtains and frowned when it fell apart in his hand. “A few months, probably. I just need some space to get my head together. Nothing with hunting. Yes, peace, quiet, and home repair. Neighbors?” He peered out the glass into the dense forest on the other side of his strip of yard. The footprints of curious wildlife were visible in the otherwise crisp, unbroken snow. “There’s another house about a mile down the road. Then eight or nine miles into Sunvalley town. Otherwise, it’s just me and the woods.”

  
  
**Chapter Two**

There are, of course, several things in  
Ontario that are more dangerous than wolves.  
For instance, the step-ladder.  
                                                               ~J .W. Curran, _The Canadian Wildlife Almanac_ , 1981

  
Crackling ice coated everything in the late April sunshine. The snow was only inches deep, and it crunched under Dean’s feet as he hurried down the stairs to meet a truck that had pulled up behind the Impala in the driveway.  
  
It hadn’t taken Dean long to realize that if he wanted to stop the water dripping on his head and the icy winter drafts any time before the spring thaw, he was going to need more supplies and some help that actually knew what they were doing. A discussion with the trust manager and a trip to the hardware store had handled the former, and a few games of pool at the local watering hole the latter. The guys there seemed to appreciate the novelty of a man who played for favors instead of cash, especially once he raked them all over the table.  
  
“Morning stranger,” Alan called, climbing out and heading around to the bed of the truck.  
  
Dean flashed him a grin and reached over the side of the bed to haul out a bundle of shingles. “Stranger? You usually deliver construction supplies to people you don’t know?”  
  
Alan’s smile was a little sourer than Dean’s own, but it was friendly enough. “Only the ones that can run a pool table like my dog runs the sheep. You do a good job at looking wet behind the ears.”  
  
“It’s a gift. Did you bring everything? ”  
  
“I told June I was going to haul everything you’d purchased out here for you and this is what they put in the truck. If you bought things that aren’t here, you need to take it up with the hardware store. I’m just glad you were playing for favors and not cash, even if it is going to cost me my Saturday.”  
  
“I have to live here; I wouldn’t do that to you guys.” Dean gave the materials filling the truck bed a calculating look. “This looks like it. And I really do appreciate it. It would have taken me three trips and been hell on my upholstery to get all of this stuff.”  
  
Alan gave the Impala a dismissive grunt, then glanced up at the roofline where the edges of the blue tarps spread over the damaged places were flipping casually in the breeze. “Are we really going to be about fixing your roof with the ice like this?”  
  
Dean shrugged and carried a bundle of shingles over to the porch. “I don’t see where I have a lot of choice here. The water coming in is destroying more of the walls and floor every day. Plus, it’s freaking cold inside.”  
  
Alan sighed and shrugged his coat off, tossing it in the truck. He squinted at the roof again. “Tell you what, you do everything I say --and don’t fall off the roof and break anything-- and I’ll do what I can to help you get this project done before Monday. You can have me all weekend and all you have to do is buy me lunch. Deal?”  
  
Dean gave him a more genuine smile than he had given anyone in months. “Deal.”

~~~~~~~

By the next afternoon, the roof was well on its way to being patched and the only injuries, contrary to Alan’s pessimistic muttering, were blisters and chapped skin. There would be more work to do when the temperature improved later in the year, but at least by the time they were finished the early spring weather would stay on the outside of the house where it belonged.  
  
A few hours in and Alan set his hammer down and looked off toward the woods. Dean straightened up and followed his gaze to see a wolf sitting out by the far fence post. He had been seeing the animal on and off since first showing up at the cabin, but this was the boldest the creature had been yet.  
  
“You see a lot of him?”  
  
Dean shrugged and banged a nail in. “Some. I see a lot of tracks around the yard in the morning, hear them at night. He’s usually out here in the afternoons when I’m working, though. I think he likes me. But I’ve only been here about a week; took me that long to realize no half-assed patch job was going to keep my head dry and the heat in.” Dean chuckled and reached for another nail, but paused when he caught sight of the look on Alan’s face. “Something wrong?”  
  
Alan was still watching the wolf. The animal was just sitting, watching them back. “Not _wrong_ , really. Just curious. You hear a lot about the wolves around here; don’t see them too often, though. They keep to themselves, and we keep to ourselves. Works out best for everyone.”  
  
Dean’s instincts pricked. “What about people hunting game, they keep to themselves too? ”  
  
“We’ve got hunters aplenty sure enough, but they don’t go deep into the forest. Not more than maybe a mile or two. Not the smart ones.”  
  
Dean set the hammer down and gave the wolf a harder look. “What happens to the less smart ones? ”  
  
“Nothing like what you’re thinking. They come back in one piece. They just don’t catch anything, and it’s... strange.”  
  
“How _strange_?"  
  
Alan raised an eyebrow. “You thinking of doing some hunting yourself?”  
  
Dean snorted. “Hardly.” He waved one hand, indicating the wolf sniffing at the fence line. “But if the neighbors are going to come calling, I figure I should at least know what manners to mind.”  
  
Alan picked up his hammer again. “It’s all just urban legends. Some people get lost, get dehydrated, get spooked, and suddenly the laws of nature are being twisted left and right. We don’t have any problem with the wolves, and there’s a few packs in the valley. They mind their own business. I was just surprised to see one out here.”  
  
“I’m not any kind of park ranger, but isn’t the valley a little small to support _several_ wolf packs?”  
  
“Sometimes people from the University come out to see us and try and figure out that very thing.” Alan sounded almost smug. “They like to come and walk around and talk to people and use fancy words to try and explain it, but they never have come up with anything reasonable, and the wolves are still here.” He shrugged. “This valley is actually a lot bigger than you would think. Not _that_ big, of course. But we’re two valleys, you know; this one and the one that curves around us. These mountains, then that valley beyond them, then the other set.”  
  
“What’s in that valley?” Dean was surprised; he hadn’t really noticed there being anything else out there from the road. He had just assumed it was valley, mountains, and then the rest of the world.  
  
“Just the wolves. It’s pretty steep and there’s a big river at the bottom, not a good place for human habitation, and besides -- it’s already occupied. Don’t need it anyway, though, and soon the wolves can have this one too.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Alan shrugged. “It’s a small town. People don’t seem to want to move here, and our kids can’t wait to get out. Hard to blame them, but it means there’s less population every year.”  
  
Dean glanced over towards the forest again, just in time to see the wolf stretch out and trot back into the dense woods. “I’m surprised. It seems like a nice town, beautiful country; would think you could get people to retire here if nothing else.”  
  
“You would think, but people don’t like to visit here much either. Say they get weird vibes. Can you believe that? _Weird vibes._ ”  
  
Dean shook his head and reached for more nails. He had certainly detected his own share of weird vibes in his life, but it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with Alan.  
  
Not everything had to be a hunt, and for now at least, he wasn’t any kind of hunter.

~~~~~~~

Honest labor, Alan’s nonjudgmental company, and the satisfaction of a job well done made Dean’s collapse into bed that night something he welcomed for the first time in months. Wolf song echoed in the mountains around him as he closed his eyes. Ignoring, as he had every night since moving into the cabin, that distant tugging in his mind that insisted that there was something in that cacophony speaking only to him: _welcome_.

  
  
**Chapter Three**

"The wolf is neither man's competitor nor his enemy.  
He is a fellow creature with whom the earth must be shared."  
                                                    -L. David Mech

  
Snow melted and spring started to slowly edge its way into the scenery. Home repair expanded into a whirlwind of hammering, sanding and cool mountain air. Dean was good with his hands and not afraid of hard work. Alan was always willing to offer pointers, and a few times he and some of the other guys stopped by to help out or provide some welcomed advice.  
  
Dean had mentioned Alan’s comments regarding the local wildlife to Bobby during one of his periodic calls. Bobby had snorted and made Dean feel generally stupid for even bothering to repeat them. After all, the area’s local hunter, Sam Trellis, had mentored both Bobby and Dean’s father. John had visited the cabin often when Dean was a kid, and Bobby himself had spent a lot of time with Trellis out in Sunvalley following his wife’s death. If there was something supernatural that needed to be taken care of, then one of them would have found out about it.  
  
“You’re there to rest,” Bobby advised him. “Don’t waste your time stalking around chasing rumors. If you want to do that, I’ve got a laundry list of real problems that need looking in to.”  
  
Pushing his body to accomplish something that had nothing to do with death was slowly sweating out the apathy and depression Dean could still feel. Real sleep and the daily distraction served to improve his disposition, and it was no time before he found himself anticipating the next day of work, instead of dreading the return of consciousness and the overwhelming burden of guilt.  
  
For its part, the wolf continued to act interested in the activities of its newest human neighbor, slowly getting bolder until it was actually entering the yard. Dean, intrigued by the animal, took to eating his lunch outside. One day on impulse he tossed half his turkey sandwich out to it. The wolf crept forward, keeping its eyes warily on the human. When Dean didn’t make any movements, it bolted the food then loped into the forest. The next morning when Dean walked out to start the day’s work, he was startled to see the wolf standing in the gravel driveway not even ten feet away from the steps, giving the Impala a good sniff. It backed off when it saw him, but not out of the yard. Dean shared his lunch again and the wolf kept him company through the afternoon until the sun sank away into the mountains.  
  
Their odd relationship seemed to expand from that point. While still not an everyday occurrence, the wolf was there more often than not, usually spending the entire day shadowing Dean around the property. It seemed interested in everything he did, even if not willing to quite come within touching distance. After awhile, Dean missed its company when the wolf didn’t show, and he started buying double the amount of meat from the deli to share with his guest.  
  
About the same time the first wildflowers were unfurling in the grass, the pattern changed. The wolf was waiting for him when he strode out the door in the morning, but instead of sitting by the stairs, it was out in the grass by the forest edge, lying on its belly. Dean kept an eye on it while he went about ripping out the porch rail, but when it ignored the ham he tossed towards it at lunchtime, he decided to try and get a closer look.  
  
Dean didn’t think the animal was lacking in intelligence, so he didn’t bother trying to hide his intention. He just walked slowly and deliberately towards until he was only yards away. The wolf didn’t seem injured, just... uncomfortable. It whined a little when he got close, and the tail swished through the grass. Dean took another careful step, just wanting to get close enough to see if the animal was in need of some kind of medical attention --not that he could really provide it if it did-- but the wolf shied and loped off.

~~~~~~~

The wolf was missing for three days. Dean hit his hand more than once because his gaze kept drifting to the woods, hoping to see flash of grey. He thought he did a few times, but nothing ever emerged. When he stepped outside the morning of the fourth day and almost tripped over it, he actually laughed, relieved.  
  
“What are you doing on the porch?”  
  
The wolf just flicked its tail in seeming disdain, but Dean couldn’t get over the feeling that it was just as pleased to see him as he was to see it.

~~~~~~~

A week later, Dean was laying half under the Impala with the sun high in the sky, cussing under his breath, covered in grease and scraping his knuckles on the undercarriage trying to tighten just _one last bolt_ so he could call the project done. Then he could get out of the cold and go take a shower. He felt a faint brush of something against his hip and pushed one hand down to see what had touched him, but found nothing but some leaves. The wind was blowing so he dismissed it and focused back on the car. A few minutes later, he heard a rattle of loose gravel and the touch was back, firmer and this time right over his crotch. Dean slid out from under the car so fast it wasn’t even conscious movement until he was sitting splayed on the gravel, and then froze.  
  
Standing warily not even four feet away was the wolf. Dean had never seen it so close. It was an impressive animal with a coat in rippling shades of gray and a dusting of black. But it was the eyes that really grabbed him him, full of wildness and thoughts he could in no way understand, yet struck a longing through him for something unnamed. The sense of connection, _familiarity_ , he felt was shocking in its intensity.  
  
When he didn’t move, the wolf crept cautiously closer until Dean could have reached out and touched it. It watched him nervously, then bent down to give his crotch another good sniff. Dean stayed locked into position, stunned by the turn of events, and also pretty sure he didn’t want to give the animal a reason to flip out on him with its teeth so close to his face and other parts he was fond of. Its nose brushed against the denim, leaving a damp spot.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
The shaggy head shot up and met him almost eye to eye. Then with no warning, the wolf swiped its tongue across Dean’s face from chin to hairline and danced out of reach.  
  
Dean made a strangled, incoherent sound of outrage that got him a curiously cocked head as he wiped at his face and glared at the animal that he could _swear_ was laughing at him. “See what kind of treats I toss you next!”  
  
The wolf stretched, showing obvious disdain for whatever the human was shouting at it. As Dean watched it trot back into the shadows of the tree line, he was surprised to find he was smiling.  
  
A few days later, when he headed out to eat his lunch in the yard, he almost stepped on a rabbit lying on the steps. It had been neatly killed and obviously placed. He bent to pick it up and the wolf stepped from the side of the wraparound porch Dean hadn’t been able to see.  
  
“This yours?” Dean asked, setting the rabbit back down carefully in case the wolf took offence.  
  
But the animal didn’t make any move to reclaim the kill, just laid down on the edge of the porch where the most sun would sweep across its fur.  
  
Dean snorted. “Yeah, you’re fearsome all right.” He picked the rabbit up thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’re going to be impressed with what I do with this.”  
  
The wolf didn’t seem particularly concerned, cracking one eye open to track Dean’s movements before apparently sinking back into slumber.  
  
The wolf _hadn’t_ seemed impressed with rabbit stew Dean set down hours later, but it gamely finished the bowl Dean set out for it, then laid back down so close to where Dean was sitting on the bare wooden planks that he could feel the warmth of its body through his jeans. The nights were still uncomfortably cool, even with his long sleeves.  
  
He stayed on the porch until close to dawn, the wolf pressed against him, the stars overhead, a strange sort of peace stealing through his bones like he hadn’t known since the phone call five months ago.

  
  
**Chapter Four**

There are nights when the wolves are silent  
and only the moon howls.  
                                      ~George Carlin

  
By the end of May, Dean was deep in the internal repairs to the cabin, ripping out planking, and sanding, and finishing the replacements. The local guys were still making their periodic drop-bys. Alan especially, who seemed to have adopted Dean almost as some kind of project, was concerned that Dean spent so much time alone, but Dean kept assuring him the peace and quiet was exactly what he was after.  
  
When Dean was alone, the wolf was there. He had thought moving his labor inside would limit his time with the animal, but one day when the screen was propped open to air out as much of the house as possible while he stained the new floor sections, he glanced up to see the wolf sitting in the doorway. It didn’t look especially happy to be there --Dean imagined the fumes were especially bad to its sensitive nose-- but it continued to loiter so Dean shrugged and turned his attention back to the floor.  
  
He yelped and dropped the can of stain when something cold and wet prodded tentatively at the back of his neck with a loud snuffling sound. Turning around fast, he glared at the quickly retreating wolf and rose to close the screen firmly behind it. Bold was one thing, but enough was enough. Dean’s resolve lasted until the next afternoon when a plaintive whine drew his attention to where the wolf was pacing in front of the door.  
  
“You can’t possibly want to come in again.” He opened the door anyway out of curiosity and the wolf stepped past him into the cabin. It threw one wary look Dean’s way before it proceeded to give the living room a thorough investigation, avoiding the freshly stained places. Then it hopped up and settled on the couch, as at home as a family dog.  
  
“You do know you’re a _wolf,_ right?” Dean asked skeptically. The animal yawned and flopped its head down on its paws. Dean gave up and went to open another window.  
  
It disappeared again for a few days a week or so later, after a particularly trying afternoon in which it whined, paced and generally refused to settle. The wolf capped the fun off by stealing Dean’s entire sandwich off the picnic table in the yard when Dean went inside to get a drink, then left it mangled and inedible on the ground. Dean would have been more irritated, but the wolf had obviously been out-of-sorts.  
  
Dean slept poorly for the next few nights, the light of the full moon burning through the thin curtains of the bedroom and his concern keeping him awake. When the wolf showed back up a few days later, Dean just acknowledge it with a nod and life resumed as normal. Or as normal as it had ever been for him. But the wolf seemed even more determined to invade his space. Dean opened the door one evening to let it out before he went to bed, and it flatly refused to leave. He took a moment to consider the likely outcome of trying to make a hundred pounds of wild animal do what it clearly didn’t want to do, then let the front door close again.  
  
“Fine, but if you pee on my floor, you’re not going to be invited back in to shed all over my furniture.”  
  
Dean left the wolf standing in the living room and headed for bed. He was just drifting off when something heavy landed on the mattress, startling him fully awake. He threw one hand out and it met thick, coarse fur and got a friendly lick. A long, warm weight pressed up against his back over the blankets. Dean blinked in the darkness, unsure what to do, but the wolf didn’t move again, and eventually Dean fell asleep still trying to decide what to do.  
  
The wolf disappeared into the forest when Dean stumbled out of bed shortly after dawn and opened the door for it, but was back on the porch before noon, and by the end of the week, Dean had grown used to only having half the bed to sprawl over.

~~~~~~~

But as preoccupying as the construction and repair work had been, it couldn’t last forever. By the time June was rolling to a close, the cabin was in as good or better shape than it had been since it was constructed. Dean enjoyed the feeling of completion and accomplishment for about a week, and then restlessness started to set in. The idea of hunting was still too painful; he just wasn’t ready to go back on the road. But sitting in the cabin day after day with nothing to do was making him crazy, leaving him with hours of emptiness with only thoughts about his dad and all the ways the Winchesters had always been damned to dwell on. The wolf trailed along with him when it wasn’t off in the forest doing whatever wolves did, but even his fascination with the animal couldn’t draw him out of his mood. He missed it when it wasn’t there, but it wasn’t distracting enough to keep him engaged.  
  
Eventually, Dean turned to the town to absorb his time, and that led him finally led him back to the local bar. It wasn’t actually that far from his cabin, and backed up to the same endless stretch of forest that he saw out his windows every day. The bar led to drinking, drinking led to more brooding, and the brooding led back to the bar. He got some concerned looks as he hunched over his glasses night after night, from Alan and some of the other people he had met during his reconditioning of the cabin, but his attempts to socialize with them for more than a few minutes did little but serve to remind Dean of how deep the divide between his own life and theirs really was; it made him snappish and they ultimately left him alone to drink his poison in solitude.  
  
He might have continued on this path indefinitely until it landed him right back where he had been in the months following John’s death, but about a week after he found his new favorite establishment, his professional curiosity was pricked by a loud conversation at a nearby table. Dean eavesdropped by habit, but it was the subject that really caught his attention.  
  
“I’m telling you, Jeannie saw one!” The man dug an elbow clumsily into the side of the woman beside him. “Didn’t she?”  
  
“She certainly saw something.”  
  
“A werewolf,” the redhead sitting across from the guy said dubiously. “Your sister saw a werewolf in the woods last month?”  
  
“Sure she did; the moon was full and everything! ”  
  
“Ralph,” scoffed the redhead’s apparent date. “How the hell does Jeannie know it’s a werewolf if she saw it on the full moon? These woods are lousy with wolves. Dogs and maybe even coyotes too. She couldn’t tell how it started the evening off if all she saw was a _wolf_.”  
  
“Unless she saw it change,” the redhead grinned.  
  
Ralph snorted. “You guys don’t know anything. Mistake you for tourists. Around here, it’s not the people turning into wolves on the full moon you have to watch out for; it’s the wolves that turn into people.”  
  
Redhead snorted Coke out of her nose. “You’re for shit, Ralph.”  
  
“I swear to God, Jeannie saw a naked man running with the wolves down by Spring Creek hollow last month. She was up in Paul’s deer blind, star gazing-- ”  
  
“You mean Paul gazing,” the woman beside him interrupted.  
  
“Whichever. The point is the guy ran past her, not even twenty feet away. Naked as a jay bird, him and half a dozen of the shaggy things.”  
  
“Bet that gave her a thrill,” the guy across the table laughed.  
  
“I think _Paul_ was the one giving the thrills,” the redhead giggled.  
  
“She’s a liar.”  
  
The conversation came to an abrupt halt as all four heads turned to face Dean.  
  
“You don’t know jack-all about werewolves. They don’t turn into wolves, just monsters. And wolves sure as hell don’t turn into people.”  
  
Ralph looked Dean over warily. “You seem to be taking a bit of table gossip personally, stranger. Is there something I can help you with?”  
  
“Gossip.” Dean threw back the rest of his beer, then slammed the bottle down on the table. “That’s all it ever is to you people, until your ‘gossip’ comes back to bite someone in the ass and they die choking on their own blood in a _fucking haunted house_.” He grabbed onto a chair to steady his balance.  
  
“You must come from the same place Rick and Wanda do,” the brunette next to Ralph suggested. “Because we only have the one type of werewolves around these parts, and they run on four feet every day of the month but three. Jeannie isn’t the only one who’s seen them.” She looked over to where the bartender had taken an interest in the shouting.  
  
“That’s for sure,” the man offered, setting down the glass he had been drying and leaning in to keep the conversation a little more private. “I saw one myself nearly three years ago when my cousin and I were fishing right before dawn at Linden Falls. Two men and a woman, naked as God made people, just strolling as calmly as you please along the lakeside with a couple of wolves. You’d think my cousin had never seen a naked female before, dropped an entire tackle box over the side, his eyes were so big, and the whole pack of them split into the forest clean as you’ve seen anything move.”  
  
“You’re full of shit,” Dean growled, and reached for his jacket.  
  
The bartender’s brows drew together. “Now, son, there’s no need to be taking that tone just because we have things a little different around these parts.”  
  
“You don’t have things _different_ ; you’re just stupid and have no fucking idea of how the world really works.”  
  
The redhead frowned at him. “I don’t think you’ve got call to be saying _we’re_ stupid, when we’re just telling some stories and _you’re_ in here cussing at us and calling us liars about _werewolves_.”  
  
Dean ripped some bills out of his wallet and tossed them in the direction of the counter without another word. He staggered towards the door with more intent that he had felt in weeks. Hunters knew werewolves, _he_ knew werewolves, and the fucking crazy locals didn’t know shit about anything.  
  
And he would damn well prove it.

~~~~~~~

It occurred to Dean, after a few miserable and fruitless hours of stumbling around the woods more than half drunk, that heading behind the bar and striking off into the forest without so much as a flashlight or a clue as to where he was going was not one of his better plans. If it wasn’t for the moon burning overhead, he wouldn’t have been able to see even his hand in front of his face, and he was starting to feel pretty sorry for himself as the haze of the alcohol began to recede before the more concrete onslaughts of _cold_ and _lost_.  
  
Once he sobered up enough to realize just how lost he was, he tried to come up with a plan that might get him back out of the forest and somewhere sane. His head really hurt, though, and more-sober was still a long way from clear-headed, so the best he had been able to come up with was to follow the distant roaring he could hear. There were a few waterfalls in the area, and most of them were pretty well known to fishermen and other locals. If he could find one, he could probably find a path out of the woods. Or at least hole up and wait for a rescue. He had a lighter and could build himself a fire beside the river to warm up a little. Though as many times and he tripped over his own feet and the undergrowth as he headed towards the roaring noise, he was pretty much reduced to just hoping he didn’t fall in.  
  
He came around the side of the outcropping the water poured off of, so close he could feel the damp spray when the wind blew his way, arms wrapped around himself for warmth and teeth chattering. His only thoughts were for building a fire and never drinking again. Alcohol was bad; he was giving serious thought to having it tattooed on his hands. Dean was so lost in feeling miserable and sorry for himself that he nearly tripped over the wolves when he did find them, having forgotten all about the original point of the expedition.  
  
For the wolves’ part, it must have been the roar of the falls that deafened them to his approach, because he was being anything but stealthy. Dean stepped around a tree and froze; before him was the partially consumed carcass of a deer, and spread around it in a circle were half a dozen wolves, busily tearing at chunks of meat while one wolf hunched over the carcass itself. His first thought was that it was a strangely beautiful sight. The carcass not so much, but the stark _naturalness_ of the scene struck him. His next thought was more related to his survival: _soscrewed_. But the breeze was blowing against his face and the wolves didn’t seem to notice his presence.  
  
Dean felt suddenly completely sober; he held his breath and carefully crept backwards from the feasting predators. When he thought he had enough distance, he turned on one foot to run... and almost slammed into a man standing not even two feet away. The guy was huge, taller than Dean by a few inches and muscled in a way that made the hunter instantly wary. Which he could immediately see because the man was also stark naked. Dean raised his gaze to the guy’s face and felt his breath leave him in a rush.  
  
“You,” Dean gasped in shocked recognition. He couldn’t tell the color of the man’s eyes in the moonlit forest, but he would be dead ten years before he forgot the soul that looked out of them.  
  
The man made an odd questioning sort of sound and cocked his head, and then Dean took in the rest of the picture. The nakedness, the smears of dirt, the shaggy hair, and most telling of all, the mask of blood that coated his face from nose to chin. Even as Dean watched, the naked stranger used his tongue to clean a broad stripe of it from the side of his mouth, eyes still boring into Dean’s face. He made that weird sound again, this time with a little note at the end that seemed almost hopeful. Then he slowly lifted an arm, reaching out. Dean was still caught up in the strangeness of the moment, and his alcoholic haze, and stood still while the man wrapped fingers around his bicep. He squeezed gently, then threw back his head and gave a deafening howl, nothing human in it.  
  
Reality slammed into Dean like a train, he ripped free of the strange _whatever_ and stumbled backwards with vague intentions of throwing himself in the lake and seeing if maybe he could _out swim_ the wolves and wolf-thing, since losing them on land seemed unlikely. But his boot caught on a limb and he fell backwards, slamming his head into something that seemed harder than dirt.

  
  
**Chapter Five**

"Throughout the centuries we have projected on to  
the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves."  
~Barry Lopez

  
Dean groaned and tried to roll over. There was surprising lack of support in that direction and a second later he was lying on a floor, blinking up at a whitewashed ceiling that in no way resembled his own. He sat up slowly, rubbing gingerly at a sore spot on the back of his skull that made interesting lights spark in his retinas.  
  
Dean’s nearest neighbor from the house a mile down from his, Lynnette Martin, bustled into the room.  
  
“Oh good! You’re up! Dave wanted to take you to the hospital, but you seemed to be breathing okay and your pulse was fine. I was going to give in if you weren’t up within the hour, though.”  
  
She did look relieved and Dean mustered a smile for her.  
  
“Hey, Lynn. So, uh--” He waved at the room in general and tried to think of a less blunt way to demand to know what the hell he was doing on her couch.  
  
“Dean.” Lynnette sat delicately on the edge of the couch he had fallen from. “I know you said you’d been having a rough time, and Dave and I certainly don’t mind being here for you in a neighborly sort of way -- but it’s very... disconcerting, to hear a rustling at the door in the wee hours of the morning and trip over your neighbor wrapped up in a blanket on your porch. You understand that, right?”  
  
Dean nodded, confused. His last memory was the forest, and the water, the wolves, and... the wolves.  
  
“You really shouldn’t be drinking so much alone,” she chided gently.  
  
“I’m sorry, Lynn. Really.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “It’s been a bad week. I’m... just real sorry to have bothered you guys. Thanks for letting me crash on your couch.”  
  
She sighed. “It’s fine. I’m just glad you wandered over here instead of down the road or into the woods. God alone knows what would have happened to you then.”  
  
Dean gave her a weak smile. “Yeah. Who knows? ” he echoed. “I’m... gonna go home.”  
  
“You sure you’re feeling okay to walk? We can drive you, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes. I was on my way out anyways.”  
  
A fractured image in his mind, naked skin and the darkness of blood in moonlight, the sound of falling water and a child crying.  
  
“Jesus,” Dean mumbled, rubbing at his eyes.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“It’s... nothing, Lynn. I think the walk would be good for me. Clear my head some.”  
  
She nodded and stood up. “Let me get your blanket. I don’t know how you got it so filthy, but I ran it through the wash.”

~~~~~~~

He made his way back to his own cabin in bright sunlight that made his head ache even more, which he hadn’t been sure was possible, but accepted as his due for what had been a colossal screw-up. He wasn’t _entirely_ sure what had happened, but he knew it had involved an impressive amount of alcohol, an argument in a bar about werewolves, and he was pretty certain a really stupid foray into the forest. He had no idea how he had ended up on the Martin’s porch.  
  
He sank onto his own couch and shook out the blanket Lynnette had pressed into his hands. He was cold and... cold and... Dean stared at the broad, faded stripes of the rough weave. He turned the blanket, running his finger over the edges until he found the three little holes in a neat line. Dean remembered the day those holes had happened, the accident at Bobby’s house one cold afternoon while he was learning about casting bullets.  
  
The last time he remembered seeing it was wrapped around the frail shoulders of the boy in the kitchen, fourteen years ago. Memories flashed -- the man in the woods, the feeling of _recognition_ like a blow to the gut.  
  
Last night hadn’t been some alcohol-induced hallucination; the blanket clenched in his hands was proof. What the hell had his _father_ , of _all people_ , been doing with werewolves in Montana? Other than obviously _not_ hunting them. Dean dropped the blanket on the floor and buried his face in his hands, groaning. All he had wanted was to get away from his life and take a break for awhile. And now there were _werewolves_ in his backyard. Of a kind unlike any he had ever heard of.  
  
Werewolves that his father had... helped.  
  
Dean swallowed some aspirin and took a cold shower. He planned to take a nap, but his mind kept turning in restless circles and he decided maybe some more fresh air would be a better choice. He pulled the door open and felt his knees lock into place. The wolf was sitting in front of him, just like it had dozens of times before. But this time there was no confusion for Dean about why it seemed so familiar, what it was about it that pulled at his mind with nagging annoyance. The odd hazel of the eyes that stared up into his went through him like an electric shock, and in a heartbeat, he was ten years old and feverish, touching fingers to a teary -eyed child wrapped in the old car blanket and bloody towels. Then last night in the forest...  
  
Dean backpedaled and slammed the door, sliding down to sit against it with his head in his hands.

~~~~~~~

More aspirin and a few glasses of water later, Dean had to admit to himself that whatever the larger picture and his dad’s involvement might be, the only part that was an immediate question was whether or not the overly-friendly lupine neighbor that had practically moved into his house was actually some kind of weird shapeshifter.  
  
Dean had trouble calling him a werewolf; he had hunted werewolves before and knew all about the homicidal, animalistic savagery of the afflicted. In fact, it would almost make more sense if the man was actually a shapeshifter in the more usual sense, a skinwalker. Dean had only ever heard of or seen them turning into different humans, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t turn into other things. If you could make yourself taller or shorter why not a different shape entirely? He didn’t quite see what the appeal would be for one to grow fur and hang out with a bunch of wolves, or why it would take on a human form the night of the full moon -- but who the hell knew why monsters did what they did, anyways? Maybe it was just crazy.  
  
But Alan had implied that the wolves had been weird in the valley for _generations_. And with a lessening of the pounding in his head, there was more clarity to his memories of the previous night. The people in the bar had talked about seeing _multiple_ werewolves out in the forest. A whole family of shapeshifters hanging out in the woods with wolves? Maybe there weren’t any wolves, and they were all just shapeshifters? That made even less sense. What was the motivation?  
  
Dean felt sick. Some hunter he was. A supposedly wild animal suddenly adopts him like a long-lost packmate, and even knowing everything he did about what was really out there in the world, he’d been so pathetically lonely as to just throw open his goddamned front door and let the thing in. He needed to know for sure. A silver blade would tell him what he wanted to know as far as it being a shapeshifter, but wouldn’t tell him anything unless he cut it. And once he tried that, he could kiss any chance of getting close again goodbye. But--  
  
A whine from the porch broke his train of thought.  
  
He gave a thoughtful look towards the door then glanced at the calendar. Tonight was the full moon. The people in the bar had talked about the wolves turning into people for three nights. He himself had noticed a few times the wolf acting like it was uncomfortable and going missing for a few days at a time. He hadn’t really noticed the pattern until he had a reason to piece it together, but some quick back-counting told him that it _could_ have been around the time of the past full moons. He thought about calling Bobby, but he had tried to tell Bobby about the rumors before and had been blown off, which meant Bobby didn’t have any useful information.  
  
The soft whine and a scratching sounded from the door again. It made Dean feel guilty and he realized that even sitting on the couch nursing a headache, he missed the animal’s company. If it was just an animal. And if it wasn’t...  
  
Well, as a hunter, he had a quick answer to that. But it was the answer his father had drilled into him, and that he had himself apparently disregarded when it came to the wolves of the valley. If Dean was right. But he didn’t have to make any decisions until he knew that for certain.  
  
And he thought he knew exactly how to find out.

  
  
**Chapter Six**

"We have doomed the Wolf not for what it is,  
but for what we have deliberately and mistakenly perceived it to be  
...the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless killer  
...which is, in reality no more than a reflexed images of ourself."  
                                                      ~Farley Mowat

  
Dean made a special effort to not pay the wolf more attention than usual when he finally went back outside after coming up with his plan. It was only two or three hours until sunset. The wolf actually seemed somewhat wary, coming close, then pacing away again. Agitated. Dean ignored it. If his estimations and guesses were correct, it was always short-tempered and uncomfortable on the full moon and the bracketing days, and he figured it could probably smell his own unease.  
  
He fiddled under the Impala’s hood for awhile, until whatever anxiety the wolf was sporting seemed to have worn off and the animal, apparently supremely bored, was napping in the grass. Then Dean cleaned his hands off and casually made his way to the back of the cabin and the root cellar door. The root cellar itself was mostly wasted on Dean. He stored most of his car maintenance gear and construction supplies in the shed. So other than some herbs he had bought at a local market hanging from the low supporting beams overhead to dry, the space was empty. It had been designed to function as a safe place for waiting out storms; the floor was cold, hard-packed dirt and the walls bare cement blocks; the slanted door that led down into it was very solid and heavy. As were the latch and padlock he had installed a few weeks earlier with some vague mind of maybe bringing some of his dad’s stored gear out to the cabin, if he decided to stay. He was counting on the sturdiness of that construction. And on the wolf’s curiosity.  
  
Sure enough, he wasn’t poking around in the cellar more than three or four minutes before the wolf slunk down the short stairs and started sniffing around in the corners. It flashed Dean a look when he moved closer to the door, pretending to be interested in checking the herbs overhead, but it didn’t seem to see anything threatening in the human’s movements and went back to its exploring. Dean waited until the wolf was investigating against the far wall, then took the stairs in two quick strides and heaved the door shut. He hooked the padlock at the same time a furious scratching started up and was backing away when a few snarls and then a long, low, mournful note sounded from inside.

~~~~~~~

The howling continued until the sun sank behind the mountains, reverberating through the house. Dean clenched his teeth and endured. Finally, it tapered away until silence had fallen again. A deeper silence than should have been was left in its wake; even the crickets and other normal sounds of twilight were gone. Unnatural stillness settled over the property.  
  
Dean hefted a shotgun loaded with silver shot and stepped outside. He turned the outside floodlights on and paused, staring -- though he didn’t know why he was surprised. Just beyond the fence line were somewhere between twenty and thirty wolves. It was impossible to count their number because beyond the ones sitting statue still watching him were others who paced and moved, disappearing and returning from the forest gloom beyond the light’s touch.  
  
He waited for a few minutes, but none of the wolves made any move to come closer, seemingly content where they were.  
  
“Well,” he finally commented aloud, glancing at his watch to make sure it was past official sunset. “I guess none of you guys are planning to turn human tonight. Not sure I’d call you exactly _normal_ , though.”  
  
They continued to watch with unnatural attention.  
  
The cellar door was still intact and fastened, and beyond the thick wood and metal, all was silent. Dean crouched and undid the padlock, trying to be as silent as possible so as not to give away his presence to whomever, or _whatever_ , might be inside.  
  
The lock opened with a soft, well-oiled click and he laid it aside in the grass. Dean cast one more glance over his shoulder, but the wolves were all still where he had left them. He took a deep breath, gripped the shotgun with one hand, and heaved the door open with the other.  
  
The steps, washed in the light from the bulb on the house, were brightly lit, but they led into a dark stillness. Dean waited, but nothing approached from the cellar’s depths.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
He waited a moment, but there was no sound other than his own breathing and the crunch of crisp grass beneath his feet as he shifted his weight uncertainly. Dean waited about ten minutes more, but when nothing happened, he knew he was going to have to go down. The cellar had its own light, but he had forgotten until just then that the switch was at the bottom of the stairs. Backlit from the floodlight, he would make an attractive target for anything waiting for him in the dark, and turning that light off would leave him completely blind while his possible assailant had other senses to rely on. It was the night of the full moon, but the moon itself hadn’t risen yet, and it was pitch black outside until it did. Dean cursed his bad planning and started to step back, meaning to close the door and rethink his options. A flashlight would be awkward to hold with the shotgun, but not as awkward as getting ambushed in the dark.  
  
A low growl from behind startled him and he spun. The wolves had grown tired of waiting for whatever was supposed to happen and he was surrounded in a loose semicircle at about twenty feet. Dean swore again. He could probably take out a couple but that would still leave several dozen to take him down. The only defensible place was the cellar, along with whatever was waiting inside.  
  
Dean stepped onto the first step and the wolves stopped advancing. He kept a wary eye on them, but his ears trained for any sound below as he stepped slowly down, fumbling for the switch on the wall. He thought he could hear rough breathing from off in a corner and he trained his shotgun that way as his fingers found the switch and flipped it.  
  
The first thought that crossed his mind as light bloomed in the close confines of the low cellar was _I was right_. Followed immediately by _holy fuck_. Lying on his side with his back to the cool cement and his face buried in an arm curled against the earthen floor was the man from the forest. The very naked man who’s powerful frame was relaxed as though in sleep. Dean didn’t believe it for a heartbeat. He swallowed and leveled the shotgun.  
  
“Hello?” he tried again.  
  
The man rolled into a crouch almost faster than Dean could register. He skinned human lips back from human teeth and gave a full rumbling growl of warning that would have done any of the wolves outside proud. Where the previous night he had seemed curious and pleased to see Dean, now he was defensive and scared, eyes darting over Dean’s shoulder as if seeking escape.  
  
Dean’s finger tightened on the trigger, uncertain of what action to take. He had thought an answer would be obvious once the question of the wolf’s nature was resolved, but Dean’s inner turmoil was even worse. It wasn’t even Dean’s total certainty that if he shot the shapeshifter he would find his own end under the teeth and claws of the wolves outside. It was three and a half months of near-constant companionship, the haunting memory of slender, blood- stained fingers twined with his own, the odd sense of _joy_ he had felt from the man in the woods the night before. And of course, the mystery of whatever the fuck his father had been doing patching the creatures up in the kitchen instead of hunting them down.  
  
The moment of indecision held him until another low growl sounded, this one from the stairs at his back. He half turned in alarm and that was all the opportunity the man needed. In a second, Dean found himself pinned down under what had to be at least two hundred pounds of muscle, and the shotgun ripped from his grip and tossed aside. He struggled hard and found it surprisingly easy to toss the stranger off. The -- _man? wolf?_ \-- didn’t seem to know what to do with his own limbs to keep Dean pinned, but what he lacked in wrestling skill he more than made up for in persistence. Despite a few solid blows and a kicked face, when Dean wriggled away and made another grab for the gun, the stranger got him firmly by the ankle and dragged him back beneath him.  
  
More wolves slipped into the cellar during the struggle and eventually Dean lay still, panting. Even if he managed to disable the man, he wouldn’t escape the wolves too. He’d wanted to know what kind of monster he’d let into his house. Maybe it was time to find out. He relaxed against the cool earthen floor and waited, open to anything.  
  
But nothing happened.  
  
The shifter pulled away from him slowly, watching Dean warily and licking the blood from his own lips, a souvenir of Dean’s attempts to win free. When Dean continued to lay unmoving, the wary expression gave way to one of more puzzlement. After a moment, the strange creature leaned back in and Dean braced himself to fight for his life, but instead of teeth sinking into his skin, there was a soft snuffling sound, and Dean realized the man was _sniffing_ him. He didn’t protest and the sniffing got more enthusiastic until the man’s nose was buried against Dean’s neck. He moved down towards Dean’s armpit, one hand tugging at Dean’s clothes like they were in his way. He growled then and Dean finally took action, shoving at him until the shifter rocked back on his heels, giving Dean enough room to slowly sit up. The wolves weren’t acting threatening either; Dean felt more like he was on some weird display than in the middle of a conflict. He looked for his shotgun. It took him a moment to find it because all he could see was part of the stock from under the heavy coat of the wolf perched on top of it. It yawned when it saw him looking, displaying a healthy set of very sharp teeth.  
  
“Right,” Dean muttered.  
  
The tension in the cellar had dropped, and at a loss, Dean finally just stood up. The man stood when he did and the two of them watched each other. The stranger took a hesitant step towards him after a minute and Dean found himself backing up until his boot hit the bottom stair. The wolves had melted away at his approach, leaving the way out clear. That seemed like a reasonable solution, and he climbed out of the cellar into a clear night where the full moon was just starting to edge over the mountains. He kept walking until he was on the porch; then glanced back to see the man and wolves arrayed out on the lawn, still watching him. Dean turned and went inside. He was too tired and confused to deal with anything.  
  
He just wanted to sleep.

~~~~~~~

Dean did sleep, but it was restless and disturbed, and he woke up around noon feeling almost as tired as when he went to bed. The nightmares he didn’t clearly recall, but he thought they had featured his father prominently.  
  
Uneasy sleep hadn’t given him any more insight into what to do about his wolf problem, and he mulled it over while perched on his kitchen counter crunching through dry cereal. So the wolf was a shapeshifter of some sort. It hadn’t hurt him, even when given plenty of opportunity and provocation, and neither had its furrier... relatives. Alan and the locals knew there was something odd about the local wolf population, but they weren’t afraid of them and no one had ever mentioned anything like missing people or murders in the area. Dean knew for a fact his father had known about the wolves. Which explained the wolf in the kitchen the night he had seen the boy, and the strange man wearing his dad’s clothes. But it didn’t tell Dean anything about them, other than the man he had trusted even more than himself didn’t consider the creatures to be targets. Given only that and no other information...  
  
Dean sighed and moved onto a raw Pop-tart, moodily wishing he had an Ouija board. There were questions he needed answers to and the only people he knew who could give them to him were dead. His gaze drifted across the window and he blinked. The day was overcast and a rough wind was causing the trees to bend and sway, but sitting squarely in the middle of his lawn, the long grass dotted with wildflowers, was the wolf.  
  
It was gone by the time he was dressed for the day.

~~~~~~~

He was sprawled out on the couch that evening, half paying attention to the cheesy action film grinding out its predictable plot on the television screen, and half wondering if maybe the hottest nightlife in the region wasn’t some moonlight jamboree of naked wolf- people out in the mountains, when he heard the knock on his door.  
  
Or rather, he heard a soft scratching and hesitant- sounding rap. One of the things he still hadn’t done was install the peephole into the new door. He knew better, and he was kicking himself for it now.  
  
“Hello?” There were no sounds but the odd scratching again and then a rap even quieter than the first one.  
  
Dean muttered a curse under his breath and held his gun ready with one hand just beyond the frame where whoever was at the door wouldn’t be able to see it immediately. He flipped the light switch, unbolted the lock and twisted the handle, pulling it open against his boot. On the other side of the screen door stood the naked stranger he’d wrestled in the cellar. The shifter was blinking in the sudden light, and switching his gaze between Dean and his still upraised hand, looking amazed.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean snorted when he found his voice. “You knock, and it opens. Amazing what they can do with technology these days.”  
  
The wolf in human form peered past his shoulder, pressing gently against the screen. He whined, the sound odd from a human throat, and pressed a little harder, looking at the side of the door as if for some kind of handle.  
  
“It doesn’t have one, you just-- here.” Dean pushed the screen door open and stepped back, feeling like he was in some surreal dream. The wolf entered the house immediately, with just one sidelong glance at Dean as he stepped past. Dean, for his part, was bemused. If there had ever been a part of his training that was supposed to prepare him for this sort of thing, he had missed it entirely.  
  
In its human guise, the wolf seemed just as curious about Dean’s home as he had with four feet. Everything had to be reexamined. Poked and prodded until the shifter satisfied whatever he was after and had moved on. Dean followed him around for awhile, until the wolf settled on the end of the couch where he usually lounged when furry and gave Dean an expectant look. When Dean didn’t move from his place by the wall, the wolf stretched out one long, lean, muscled leg and poked the remote control with it, giving Dean that look again. Dean absently walked over to the couch and flicked the television on. His guest gave a satisfied sort of sound and settled himself more comfortably on the worn cushions, ignoring Dean’s presence as thoroughly as he ever did with his attention was absorbed by the magic box. It gave Dean all the time he wanted to look the shapeshifter over.  
  
He sank into a chair and swept his gaze over the wolf’s human body in a closer inspection than the circumstances in the woods and last night in the cellar had allowed. Smooth muscle shifted under pale skin that Dean suddenly realized must have never seen sunlight. Shaggy brown hair hung in an uneven wave to his chin, ragged enough that Dean had no problem believing it had been cut with teeth instead of scissors. The flickering firelight and the soft glow of the lamps picked out the fine, pale lines of healed wounds scattered over his naked form. Easily the worst of the collection was the heavy, raised scar that wrapped from his left knee down to his ankle in a long curve, worried on the edges like whatever had inflicted the injury had done so with teeth. Dean remembered that wound when it was fresh, and recalled his dad saying something about a trap. He let his breath out in a long hiss. The sound seemed to startle the wolf, who shot Dean a brief look, then turned back to the TV when Dean remained unthreateningly in place.  
  
The evening didn’t get any more exciting from there. Dean’s unexpected guest remained glued to the television set, with the occasional glance at Dean, and Dean remained in his chair, studying the wolf.  
  
Sometime between _M.A.S.H._ reruns and the early morning infomercial set, Dean drifted to sleep. It had been a stressful few days for him and there was nothing in his guest’s demeanor to keep his adrenaline up. He slept so soundly that he would have probably been content to stay until dawn in the chair’s comfortable embrace, but something touched him. He woke, stirred from a dream about a particularly good time with some women in Biloxi a few years back, to a gentle hand sliding under his shirt and a nose brushing under his ear. Warm breath huffed against his skin. It felt good and he turned his head sleepily to give better access. The snuffle into his hair made his eyes fly open, suddenly wide awake. He tried to sit up but an arm over his chest held him down. Dean turned his head and met the wolf’s gaze from only inches away. The hazel of his eyes was very dark, and Dean didn’t try to move as the wolf leaned in and licked over Dean’s cheekbone.  
  
“We can’t do this,” Dean whispered, mostly to himself. To whatever was wrong with him inside that was telling him to just go with it. To lean in, and touch back...  
  
The shifter rubbed the side of his face against Dean’s shoulder and inhaled deeply against his throat.  
  
Another exploring hand petted over his hair. Dean counted to ten slowly, soaking up an attention that fed some hidden part of his soul despite his conscious inclinations, then used both hands to gently push the wolf back.  
  
“We can’t do this,” he repeated, louder and with more conviction. “If you want to pet me, or sniff me, or _whatever_ , well -- I suppose that’s only fair; I wanted to get a good look at you too. But I have to be awake, and the hands,” he fished the wandering one out from under his shirt, “stay out of my clothes.”  
  
His guest didn’t seem to understand his words, but he definitely understood Dean’s scowl and crossed arms. After a few more attempts to get closer than Dean was comfortable with, the wolf heaved a great sigh and went to curl back up on the couch.

~~~~~~~

Shortly before dawn, Dean roused again, this time to an anxious-sounding whine and the rattle of the door handle. He opened one eye and regarded his guest with irritation.  
  
“You were fine all night; you can’t give it a few more minutes? It’s only--” Dean eyed the clock over the mantle, “--about 7:30. The sun doesn’t even come up until...” His voice trailed off as he was given another anxious look and a low whine.  
  
The sun.  
  
The _shapeshifte_ _r_ in his living room blew shaggy hair out of his face and huffed. It was the most purely human gesture he had made since Dean had let him in the previous night.  
  
Dean stood up abruptly. The man started at the sudden move and his gaze darted towards the gun lying on the side table as he stilled. Dean sighed and walked over to open the door. The gun he ignored. He knew he wasn’t going to use it. Any possibility of that had passed sometime between the fight in the cellar and when he opened the door to a hesitant knock. Or maybe it had passed fourteen years ago in the dead of a moonlit night. But whenever it had happened, the wolf had crossed the line between a hunter’s proper prey and the innocents they protected. He hovered in a grey area Dean hadn’t even known existed, and there was no choice now but to follow the odd path and see where it led.

  
  
**Chapter Seven**

"How lonely is the night without the howl of a wolf."  
~Unknown

  
The wolf acted like nothing about their relationship had changed. It was waiting for Dean the next morning, four -footed and properly furry, and behaved exactly as it had for the past few weeks, watching and following Dean around the property and into the house. It was strange to be cooking in the kitchen and glance over the divide to see the wolf laid out on the couch, staring at the television, and know that the human visitor of the previous night and the animal flicking its tail idly against the worn cushions were the same creature.  
  
It followed Dean into his bedroom at night and Dean did nothing when it hopped onto the bed and curled up beside him. Though he laid awake long into the morning, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life.  
  
But after a couple of days, the weird feeling wore off and the paranoid need to track the wolf’s movements constantly when it was near him faded into an odd acceptance. Dean knew that what he really needed to do was call Bobby and toss the mess on his lap, since Dean himself was clearly not able to think objectively about the situation -- as witnessed by the shapeshifting wolf eating leftover chicken out of a pan on his floor with an air of great contentment. But he wasn’t sure exactly what to say to the man who had helped raise him to be a hunter, then sent him off without so much as a warning to live in a valley full of werewolves.  
  
Even if he only had actual proof that _one_ of the valley inhabitants was a shapeshifter, the rest of the pack acted damn strange too. And Bobby knew. One of the things Dean had realized in the last day or so since confirming his suspicion about the wolf was that Bobby almost _had_ to know. His dad had known, and he and Bobby were thicker than thieves when it came to hunting stuff. And while it was possible that maybe this was a secret his dad had kept even from one of his mentors, in retrospect, Bobby’s blowing off Dean’s attempt to tell him about the valley rumors was _too_ fast, a little _too_ derisive. Hunters tracked leads by rumors and local legends. Dean himself had been too determined to distance himself from anything involving the job, but what was Bobby’s excuse? Unless the entire thing had been a lie to try and convince Dean to leave it alone. And he knew Bobby well enough that he should have known he was lying right from the start.  
  
“Singer.” The gruff familiarity of the tone only made Dean angrier.  
  
“You should have told me, Bobby. You should have fucking told me.”  
  
“Did you kill any of them?” Bobby’s tone was wary.  
  
Dean snorted into the phone. “At least you’re doing me the grace of not pretending you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”  
  
“Did you?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“No!”  
  
The wolf looked up sharply from its food at the tone of his voice. Dean pointed a meaningful finger at it to stay, then went into his bedroom, closing the door firmly behind himself. He lowered his voice.  
  
“Not, you know, that’s it isn’t still a possibility.” Especially if the wolf continued to think sticking a cold nose into the bend of his knee at three a.m. was a fun game, but Dean didn’t think that was something he needed to share with Bobby.  
  
“They aren’t evil, Dean. They just want to be left alone. They leave the Sunvalley humans alone, and are usually good at staying out of sight when idiots go wandering into their territory. There’s no call to be hunting them.”  
  
“They’re _werewolves_ , Bobby! ”  
  
“They are perfectly nice wolves with a few pack members who occasionally look like humans. They aren’t a threat! Leave ‘em alone. If you don’t want them as neighbors then move out, but you don’t want to piss the packs off, Dean. They are pretty forgiving of mistakes, but if you go after them knowingly, there isn’t anyone going to find your body when they’re done.”  
  
“That _sounds_ like a pretty serious threat.”  
  
“It’s not evil to defend yourself. Stay away from the wolves, in whatever form.”  
  
Bobby’s lack of dissembling had actually taken some of the edge off of Dean’s temper and he was calmer when he spoke again. “My dad knew about them.”  
  
“Yeah, he did.”  
  
“Why didn’t he tell me?!”  
  
Bobby sighed. “I don’t know all what John knew; I don’t know much more myself. But I think he didn’t want you repeating his mistakes.”  
  
“What mistakes,” Dean growled.  
  
“John didn’t have any problems with hunting after your mom died. He took to it like a duck to water; all that rage and anger he had finally getting an outlet. But he didn’t play well with others and it was pretty obvious he was going to get himself killed. I introduced him to Sam Trellis, who’d been one of my own mentors, way back when. Trellis had a good hand with young hunters with more bullets than brain cells, and I thought he might be able to knock some sense into your dad before you ended up an orphan. Well, Trellis took a shine to your dad rightly enough and invited him back to his cabin. He was real protective of the wolves, Dean, and I don’t know how your dad found out about them but he did. Sam managed to convince him they weren’t a danger somehow, and that was that. But it messed with your dad’s purpose. He started second-guessing himself about what he was hunting and eventually he hesitated at the wrong time and people died.”  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“You knew your dad; he didn’t take it well. It made him even harder after that. I know he kept up his friendship with Trellis, and I know you guys kept visiting up at the cabin sometimes, but he didn’t want to confuse you about what was out there. He didn’t want to pass onto you his doubts.”  
  
“What the _hell_ does that mean?! I might have been out there killing things that didn’t deserve to be killed and _Dad_ didn’t want me to have any doubts?”  
  
“He taught you the trade,” Bobby snapped. “How to do it right. To do your damn research and track the monsters by the wreckage they leave in the world. You’re not going to trip over anything minding its own business that way. He didn’t want you making his mistakes.”  
  
“I tripped over the fucking wolf!”  
  
Silence from the other end of the line.  
  
“Did you hurt it?”  
  
“What? No.” Dean sighed. “I mean, he’s eating chicken on my kitchen floor. The only way he might get hurt is if he decides to eat the pan too. I... Dad should have told me, Bobby. Or you should have.”  
  
“Truthfully, Dean, Trellis was a good friend and I gave him my word not to tell anyone about the wolves, and to do my best to keep hunters away from the valley. I was hoping you would take a break, get so bored you couldn’t stand yourself, and be back out on the road by now. How _did_ you run into the wolves? ”  
  
“They ran into me. One of them started following me around almost from the first day I showed up and was working outside. After awhile, it started getting closer and... I don’t know, it just seemed weird not to have it around. One day, he followed me inside and he’s been here most of the time ever since. It’s, um, kind of like a cross between having a roommate and having a dog. We fight over the remote, he sleeps in the house.” That “in the house” meant “in my bed” also wasn’t something Dean wanted to discuss.  
  
“How’d you find out he’s a shapeshifter?”  
  
“Ah, well, that’s actually a fun story.” That he had no intention of telling. “I was out in the forest one night and ran smack into him. Human him, tall, about my age, familiar eyes. I was so surprised, I hit my head on something and woke up at my neighbors. I was pretty suspicious so I trapped the wolf in the cellar the next night and he shifted.”  
  
“And you didn’t shoot him?”  
  
“I’m not gonna lie, I was thinking about it. But... yeah. Anyways, we made our peace.”  
  
“And now he’s eating chicken in your kitchen.”  
  
“He likes chicken.”  
  
Another heavy silence.  
  
“Why didn’t you call me before?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “I didn’t want to explain to you that I had a werewolf pretty much living with me. But then I realized you must have known about the freaking wolves and I thought I’d call you up for a chat.” His voice was a little more heated as he finished speaking, but he didn’t feel furious anymore. Bobby’s calm, matter-of-fact tones had killed most of Dean’s anger, but he was still annoyed. “What else can you tell me about them? ”  
  
“I can tell you it’s very strange that one of them has taken up with you. Not all of them shift, you know; from what Trellis said, most of them keep their fur forms for their entire lives. I’m a little worried about what a young, apparently otherwise unattached wolf that does spend some time on two feet is doing practically living in your back pocket.”  
  
“Why?” Dean asked, surprised.  
  
“Because they mate for life, and I have to wonder if what you seem to see as some kind of weird friendship isn’t something entirely different to the damn wolf.”  
  
“You think he thinks I’m his _mate_? You think he might have missed the fact that I’m a _guy_?!” Dean remembered waking up in the chair the first night the wolf had spent in the cabin in its human form. The feel of soft, human skin under his hands as he’d shoved him back, and the depth of color and confusion in those hazel eyes. Given a few days between the then and now, Dean had decided what he had read into the wolf’s actions was ridiculous. It had been curious about him, and wanting to touch and smell was perfectly natural for a wolf. Or a whatever.  
  
He refused to consider that maybe Bobby had a point.  
  
“Maybe he doesn’t care about that,” Bobby snapped. “And how am I supposed to know what a wolf thinks?! But if _you_ actually care, you might want to consider getting some more distance between the two of you. Just in case.”  
  
“That’s totally insane, Bobby!”  
  
“Maybe. Maybe not. But unless you’re planning to put down roots in that valley, one day you’re going to leave and he’s going to have to stay. You shouldn’t be encouraging him to... get attached.”  
  
“He’s not a dumb animal that needs me to run his life for him. I don’t make him stay with me, and short of actually driving him off, I don’t know how I’m supposed to make him leave me alone. If he wants to stay here, he’s welcome to. And when I leave, that’s just something he’s going to have to get over.”  
  
“It’s your funeral,” was Bobby’s encouraging reply.

  
  
**Chapter Eight**

"The gaze of the wolf reaches into our soul."  
~Barry Lopez

  
Life went on. July burned into August and the wolf stayed just as close as ever.  
  
Dean, after waking up from a bizarre dream in which he was cruising along I-40 in the Impala with the windows rolled down on a beautiful sunny day --and the wolf sitting shotgun with his head hanging out the window-- had to acknowledge that there was some merit to at least one of Bobby’s points.  
  
Feeling completely ridiculous one afternoon, he sat on the porch steps and got the wolf’s attention, then proceeded to try and explain, using hand gestures and the shortest, most common words he could think of, that he wasn’t staying forever. The wolf sat patiently in front of him, head cocked to one side and eyes far more intelligent than any animal’s should be. Dean really had no idea how much of what he tried to explain the wolf understood, if any of it. But when he was done and the wolf brushed heavily against his knees before trotting back off into the forest, he could at least honestly tell himself that he tried.  
  
The calendar tacked to the cabin wall showed the moon phases and was covered with heavy red Xs as Dean counted down. He wasn’t at all surprised when the morning of the night Dean first expected the change, the wolf was listless and uninterested in doing much of anything. Dean set out a pan of cool water and tossed the remote control onto the couch next to his guest, then headed into town to do some shopping and laundry. The wolf had been shifting his entire life; he didn’t need Dean’s supervision to sulk on the couch. There was also the niggling problem in the back of Dean’s mind that he wasn’t sure he actually _wanted_ to see the change either. He had seen shapeshifters and it turned his stomach. There hadn’t been any of the nasty residue in the cellar after the night he had locked the wolf in, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something equally as hard to watch.  
  
He left the cabin door open so there was only the screen in place that could be nosed open so the wolf could leave if he wanted to. Getting back in would be more challenging, but Dean wasn’t really concerned about his guest missing the afternoon soaps.  
  
The wolf, in human form, bounded out of the forest and grabbed Dean in a bear hug when Dean pulled up hours later, shortly after sunset. He released Dean just about as the need for oxygen was growing desperate with a quick lick and a back-step. The oddly tilted hazel eyes were alight with an infectious happiness Dean couldn’t help but respond to.  
  
“You staying the night?” The shifter just stepped back into his space, and Dean pressed a hand against the broad chest to hold him back. “You’ve got to stop licking me.”  
  
He got that quizzical look again, but had the impression it wasn’t the words that had the wolf confused so much as why Dean would possibly want that.  
  
“It’s not healthy,” Dean grumbled, aware of the hard muscle and bare flesh under his touch; he could feel the man’s heartbeat through the skin of his palm. His body took a sharp notice that made Dean uncomfortable; he pulled his hand back as if burned.  
  
“We need to find you a name.”

~~~~~~~

He tried a variety of different options on his oblivious guest as he threw together something to eat, the shifter had discovered some old photo albums in a wooden chest while being nosy and was sprawled on his belly on the floor, lazily kicking one foot and flipping through pages. Dean had no idea if the wolf was pickier about his food in his human form, but certainly he’d been willing to eat just about anything that was offered when he was furry. _Bob, Eddie, Justin, Dave..._  
  
Dean carried two plates of skillet-fried bologna and canned green beans into the living room and sat on the floor near his guest. He laid one plate near the fascinated shifter’s elbow and settled back to eat his own. But the wolf paid his food no mind, staring intently at a black and white photo Dean couldn’t make out from his seat.  
  
“Not hungry?”  
  
The shifter’s eyes didn’t so much as flicker. Dean cleared his throat as obnoxiously as he knew how; that got him a response. The man crawled over to him, looking puzzled. Dean gave the warning growl he had been practicing on the wolf when it looked like his plate was about to get crowded off his lap and his guest sat back, disappointed.  
  
When Dean didn’t do anything else interesting, the shifter _hmphed_ and went back to the photo album. After a moment, he held the book up so Dean could see, tapping one finger against a blurry figure in one of the photos. “Sam.”  
  
Dean choked on a green bean.  
  
“What?!” he wheezed, when he could breathe again. He wasn’t surprised to find concerned eyes only inches away from his and he shoved the man away again so that he had some breathing room. “You can talk?!”  
  
Again that curious head tilt. Then a shrug.  
  
Dean slid over to pick up the album. The picture the wolf had been so interested in was probably at least twenty to thirty-five years old, and while Dean didn’t recognize any of the others in the photo, Sam Trellis was standing in the middle of the group. Dean pointed to him and waited expectantly.  
  
After a few more seconds of pinning Dean with a look that had an odd feel of _calculation_ behind it, the man obligingly enough opened his mouth again. “Sam.”  
  
Dean slammed the album shut and glared at him.  
  
“Can you say anything else?” he demanded. He’d known the wolf could understand a portion of what he said, but speaking was a new trick.  
  
The wolf noticed his plate and made a production of picking at the green beans.  
  
“Fine,” Dean growled. “You like the name? You can be Sam too.” He scooted closer and poked the wolf in the chest. “Sam.” He touched his own chest. “Dean.”  
  
The wolf looked... bemused.  
  
“I need something to call you; having it be something you can say would be useful if, you know, you ever get picked up by the cops or anything like that,” Dean insisted. “If you have a name or you don’t like that one, tell me now.”  
  
“Sam,” the wolf repeated. The he gave a smile of pure mischief and reached out to touch Dean’s leg. “Dean.”  
  
Dean pulled a pillow off the couch and hit him.

~~~~~~~

Dean lay awake that night long after the wolf, _Sam_ , had fallen asleep curled up beneath the sheets beside him. Dean himself lay wrapped in a separate blanket. Allowing Sam in his wolf form to curl up against his skin in the bed was entirely different than allowing the same when he was human. There were _reasons_ he wouldn’t let Sam sleep curled against his body as a human, and the night had highlighted the biggest.  
  
Dean had cleaned up the living room as best he could after the pillow fight, but still the occasional bit of down drifted onto his face from the total disaster they had made of the cabin. Dean blew it away, but knew, resigned, that eventually another one would land on him. It was inevitable that he would be finding feathers everywhere for _months_. The pillows had been a housewarming gift from his neighbor Lynnette. Dean hadn’t really known what to do when she had shown up a couple of days after he moved to the cabin, toting a blueberry pie and the pillows. But she had _pie_ , so he let her in, and when she left awhile later, the pillows were tucked neatly against the sides of his battered couch. She said they added style.  
  
Sam had looked more shocked that anything when Dean hit him with one, and for a few seconds, Dean thought he had made a horrible mistake in not considering how a wolf would take the attack, so matter how soft and fluffy the weapon was. But after that first intent moment, Sam had returned Dean’s grin with his own somewhat uncertain smile and reached for the other pillow.  
  
While game, the wolf didn’t seem to grasp the nuances of a pillow fight and had only let Dean get a few blows in before he’d started using his teeth on the offending cushion Dean was trying to pummel him with. It was less than five minutes before they were both on the floor, panting, and the air was alive with down like a thousand geese had exploded in the room. Sam had also managed to land in his plate, and the smear of green beans and grease from the bologna down his side and hip, liberally mixed with feathers, was not something that was going to be just wiped off.  
  
Dean had tugged the remaining pillow out of Sam’s grip and tossed it back on the couch, then dragged him down the hall to shove the werewolf into the shower stall. The wolf had been surprisingly cooperative, but he had never seen Dean bathe and didn’t seem to know what to do. He just stood under the warm spray with an expression of great curiosity, but made no motion to wash. Dean sighed, because he really should have anticipated that. He grabbed the shampoo and a washcloth. The shampoo wasn’t tear-free and Dean quickly discarded the idea of washing the shifter’s hair. He could probably get the wolf to close his eyes, but maybe not keep them closed, and Sam’s attitude of cooperation might evaporate if the bathing caused pain.  
  
He soaped up the cloth and started with Sam’s neck. The wolf seemed to find the entire production amusing, but when Dean worked down to his waist and tried to give Sam the washcloth, Sam promptly reached out and tried to touch Dean with it. Dean didn’t really want his clothes soapy and wet, at least not more than was avoidable, and snatched the cloth back. The wolf looked disappointed. Dean rolled his eyes and was reaching out to continue the process when he noticed that Sam seemed to be enjoying himself. A lot. It wasn’t really an unexpected development, the shifter clearly liked Dean, in whatever capacity, and Dean was pretty much running bare hands over Sam’s naked, wet and soapy body. Even without the affection, the ‘wet, naked and soapy’ part would have been explanation enough. Touch felt good.  
  
But it wasn’t Sam’s reaction that made Dean hesitate, it was his own. He realized that he _wanted_ to touch Sam, and not for the functional purpose he had originally insisted on bathing him for.  
  
And that was a line Dean refused to cross.  
  
Sam being a guy wasn’t the problem. As soon as Dean had realized what his dick was for, he had started off into a lively exploration of his sexuality that wasn’t limited by what his partner had in their pants. His dad’s only commentary had involved an uncomfortable lecture on safe sex and good sense, before pretty much tuning out Dean’s sexual escapades in favor of more serious matters. Sam being a _wolf_ , though -- that was beyond the pale even for Dean.  
  
Dean stuffed the washcloth back into Sam’s hands and backed up a few feet. When Sam just stood there, Dean impatiently mimed washing the rest of his body. “It’s not that hard! You just rub the cloth over your skin and let the water wash it off.”  
  
Sam held the washcloth out hopefully, but Dean just crossed his arms and glared. The wolf huffed and sulkily began to scrub off the dirt, feathers and remains of dinner. Dean’s eyes absently tracked the movements of Sam’s hands over his skin. He shifted uncomfortably when he realized Sam was spending a lot more time on his groin that was probably necessary, and the movements were decidedly not cleaning related. Startled, he looked up and met the wolf’s eyes where he had already been watching Dean. While masturbating.  
  
Dean grabbed two towels off the shelf and tossed them onto the floor.  
  
“Don’t track water through the house,” he growled as he stalked out.  
  
The wolf bounded out after him within minutes. Dean was happy he’d gotten all of the soap off, but less happy that his idea of drying still left water running everywhere. He toweled Sam off briskly, ignoring certain places, then started mopping up the hallway. The wolf went back for the other towel and cleaned up his own share of the water. Dean was relieved to note by the time they were done that Sam’s _interest_ had abated. He was used to the wolf being naked, but that was a little much to ignore.  
  
In a moment of total self-honesty, Dean had to grudgingly admit to himself that the biggest reason Sam’s perfectly natural reactions bothered him was that if Sam had been some guy he met in a random pool hall hook-up, he would have cheerfully dragged him back to his motel room and screwed the daylights out of him.  
  
Cleaning up all the feathers after that was its own torturous entertainment. Dean wanted them in a trash bag and out of his cabin, but Sam seemed to find an endless delight in blowing them off of counters and out of crannies, which made them sail back up into the air -- where it was almost impossible to get them until they settled again. Sam ignored Dean’s grumbles, and Dean didn’t have the heart to make him knock it off. The end result was it was close to two a.m. when most of the feathers were bagged, and Dean gave what was left up for a bad job.  
  
He let Sam out to pee --the wolf having shown a total lack of interest in the functional aspect of bathrooms the one time Dean had made a half-hearted attempt to teach him-- then collapsed gratefully onto his bed. Sam was asleep in minutes, but Dean lay restless for some time, watching the even rise and fall of the shifter’s breath in the pale light of the moon, where it shone in through the half-pulled curtains of the bedroom window.

~~~~~~~

A rumbling growl brought Dean back to consciousness sooner than he had any desire to be awake. He smacked at the wolf, Sam having changed back with the dawn, and turned over, but the growling intensified and finally Dean rubbed sleep out of his eyes and sat up to see what the hell was going on. Sam was apparently growling at the puddle of clothes Dean had been wearing the night before. It took Dean a stupefied moment to staring to realize that underneath the growl was the faint buzz of his phone’s vibrate-mode.  
  
He hated the cell phone he had; it constantly switched between ringing and vibrating while he carried it around. That kind of crap could prove lethal on a hunt, but since he wasn’t taking jobs, he had been less concerned about getting a replacement. Dean leaned out of the bed and snagged his jeans, rummaging until he had the problem in hand. He looked at the display and gave a growl of his own.  
  
He and Bobby had an understanding about morning phone calls.  
  
“This had better be important.”  
  
Bobby snorted. “It’s half-past noon. Get your lazy ass out of bed and find something productive to do with yourself. How’s that car of yours doing?”  
  
“Did you seriously wake me up to ask about the Impala?”  
  
“I seriously called to ask how you were getting along with the neighbors. I wasn’t too sure how things stood last time we spoke, and when I didn’t hear back from you...”  
  
“You thought I might be wolf kibble?” Dean flopped back on his mattress, but he landed on Sam’s tail where it was been swept under the edge of the sheet and the wolf’s pained yip made his ears hurt. Dean cradled the phone against his shoulder and reached out to make sure he hadn’t actually damaged Sam, but the wolf gave him a deeply offended look and hopped off the bed.  
  
Dean watched as the wolf nosed through his dirty clothes scattered across the floor before registering the ominous silence on the other end of the line. It was too damn early for this.  
  
“Bobby?”  
  
“What was that, Dean?”  
  
Dean swallowed. “What did you think it was? ”  
  
“You let the wolf _in your bed_? Did you hear a damn thing I said last time?”  
  
“How do you know it was in my bed?”  
  
Bobby let out an impressive torrent of swear words.  
  
“Hey,” Dean cut in. “I like having him around, he likes being around; I don’t see anyone else bitching.”  
  
“What the hell do you think your father would say about this?”  
  
“I think my father’s dead,” Dean snapped back, then froze; the gravity of just being able to _toss that out_ hitting him in the stomach.  
  
Bobby didn’t have anything to say about that either for a moment. “I just have a bad feeling about it. I thought you would be back out on the road by now, but you’re still up there, and now you’re getting tangled up with this wolf, and-- ”  
  
Dean cut him off. “I came up here to work some shit out, Bobby. It’s not a fast thing, you know? Sam’s not messing up anything; he’s just keeping me company. No strings attached.”  
  
“ _Sam?_ ”  
  
“He likes the name,” Dean explained hastily. “Look, I’m tired; it was a late night. Let me get some more sleep and I’ll... call you later.”  
  
Bobby protested, but Dean flipped the phone shut and rested his elbows on his knees.  
  
Sam padded back into the room and sat watching him, feathers stuck to his nose and tongue, tail giving a pensive sort of swish.  
  
Dean groaned and hung his head.  
  
He was so screwed.

~~~~~~~

The next day was a storm and Sam splashed out of the woods covered in mud almost as soon as the sun sank behind the mountains. Dean managed to corral him back into the shower and put a washcloth firmly into his hand, but then he left to go work on dinner. Sam showed up in the kitchen a few minutes later, mostly mud-free and definitely disgruntled. Dean only had to point silently at the puddles of water he left in his wake and the wolf heaved a sigh and set to mopping.  
  
After dinner, they shared the couch, and Dean let Sam have the remote. The wolf favored cop shows and anything with explosions. He also liked wildlife documentaries, and when Dean stirred awake from an inadvertent nap in the wee hours of the morning, it was to find his guest glued to a skin flick with the volume turned down low. Dean rolled his eyes and went to bed, leaving Sam to it. He didn’t notice if Sam joined him in the night or if he stayed glued to the TV until the sun rose and he shifted shape, but the wolf was in its usual place on his bed when he woke up in the morning.  
  
The third night the wolf was human, Dean built a fire out in the yard. He’d been to town and brought back a sack of groceries. Good things for campfires, and they stayed out almost until sunrise. Dean didn’t know many campfire songs, but he knew a lot of _other_ songs, and while he didn’t manage to coax Sam into trying to sing the greatest hits of Metallica, listening to him try to _hum_ them had Dean laughing for hours.

  
  
**Chapter Nine**

"For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,  
and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."  
~Rudyard Kipling

  
August soon went the way of July, and September followed on its heels. Dean gathered wood from the margins of the forest and tried to build his store of firewood. He had survived rough winters before, but only passing through. John had never settled down in one place long enough for Dean to experience the entire season in the same residence. He was actually kind of looking forward to it, provided he didn’t freeze to death. Alan and the guys assured him that while the weather was frigid and the snow was deep, most of it was usually dumped on the surrounding mountains and seldom grew deeper than one or two feet in Sunvalley itself. There were so few roads that local plows could usually do the entire valley every few days, so he shouldn’t be trapped, and Dean could always call them if he got into serious trouble.  
  
But so far, the weather was cooling off much more slowly than people had expected, and there was a good chance the winter would be a mild one.  
  
Sam was still a more-or-less constant presence in his life. Occasionally, the wolf would slip away for a day or so, but he was always back almost as soon as Dean started to miss him. Now that he had a name and Dean was more comfortable with his human form, talking to the wolf seemed more like conversations with a friend that one-sided rambling to himself. Sam might not have had words to respond with --in either form, really-- but with Dean paying more attention, he found the shifter could speak volumes with his body. Dean would not have guessed skepticism could be so effectively conveyed with the tilt of a furry head, nor amusement with a tail -- but Sam was a master of both, among a considerably wider range of talents.  
  
Dean still had the odd feeling of being stalked sometimes, like the look the wolf was turning on him was something... more. It wasn’t a bad feeling, but it made Dean wonder if maybe Bobby had a point when he’d warned Dean about letting Sam stay with him. But then it was just _Sam_ again, and Dean didn’t want him to go.  
  
October was only slightly colder than September had been, and the leaves were at the height of their color when something finally happened to disrupt the comfortable routine of the cabin.

~~~~~~~

Persistent buzzing woke Dean from a dream that faded almost as soon as he opened his eyes. Reluctant and unhappy to be awake, he groped for the cell phone resting on the headboard. The phone never freaking rang when he was awake. A glance at the phone’s display told him it wasn’t a number he could easily ignore and he flipped it open with a groan.  
  
“Dean.”  
  
“Bobby, it’s--” Dean shoved the wolf off his arm so he could lean up and see the clock, “--barely six thirty in the morning. What could you _possibly_ want from me right now?” He flopped back onto the bed, rolling his eyes when Sam rumbled his discontent and tucked his nose under his tail. The wolf didn’t like being woken up by cell phones either, but at least _he_ didn’t have to be coherent.  
  
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that animal in your bed. Again,” Bobby growled.  
  
“At the ass-crack of dawn, I don’t really give a crap what you want to pretend. Can I go back to sleep?”  
  
“No, I have a job for you.”  
  
Dean sat up. “This had better be some kind of desperate need for me to sand a porch rail or something, Bobby. You know I’m out of the business right now.”  
  
Bobby’s irritated sigh was translated clearly through the phone lines. “I need you on this one, Dean. I would do it myself, but you’re closer and I have other things to deal with.”  
  
“Bobby--”  
  
“It’s practically on your doorstep. Take a good look at what’s sleeping with you; decide if you really want me to have to send another hunter to that valley.” Bobby’s voice dripped acid.  
  
Dean swung his legs over the side of the mattress and sighed. “Tell me what’s going on.”

~~~~~~~

Twenty minutes later, he was dressed and sitting on the kitchen counter, eating yogurt with the cell phone cradled against his shoulder. Sam had padded out of the room after him, yawning and with head hung low, obviously still sleepy. Dean had opened the front door for the wolf and then gone to find breakfast while Bobby finished filling him in.  
  
“ _Tikoloshe_? What are African revenants doing killing people in a suburban community in Montana?”  
  
“I certainly don’t know, but the information checks out. It, uh, looks like they came in on a shipping container--”  
  
“Is it April? Is this a joke of some kind? ” Dean demanded.  
  
“This is on the level, Dean. A Tikoloshe is killing families in Redrock. The town backs straight up to the forest around the valley. They have the same sort of rumors about the wildlife that you heard when you moved in, and I do not want to give any overzealous hunters an excuse to be poking around there. If you can’t do this, I’ll try to come do it myself.”  
  
“What about those other things you said you had to do?”  
  
“People are going to die one way or the other, but there’s gonna be more of them out where you are. Damn it, Dean,” Bobby groused, “I know you need time. I wouldn’t be asking you if there were any other good options.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“You’ll do it?”  
  
“I just said I would, Bobby. How long do you think before they hit another family?”  
  
“It’s been three families in three nights.”  
  
“So tonight then. Fantastic.”  
  
“You’ve had a break. Time to save some more lives. And take the damn wolf with you.”  
  
Dean snorted and tossed the empty yogurt container into the trash. “Yeah, because _that’s_ something I want to try and explain to him.”  
  
“That valley’s been a hotspot of supernatural activity for centuries, but those townsfolk live safe and happy. It ain’t the water that’s keeping them that way. And it ain’t hunters either, at least not our kind.”  
  
“He likes Cheetos and sniffing my shorts, Bobby. A jar of peanut butter and a movie marathon will keep him entertained all day. I’m not taking him hunting. Besides, it’s the full moon and he’s already grouchy and uncooperative. I don’t want to try and explain what I’m doing, and I _definitely_ don’t want to have to worry about him getting in my way.”  
  
“It’s your hunt.”  
  
“Right. A very brief break in my ongoing vacation. This does _not_ put me back on your call sheet.” Dean waited for Bobby’s grunt of acknowledgement before continuing. “Now tell me what you know about Tikoloshe and let’s see if I can get a damn plan together before they’re mopping more bodies up in the suburbs.”

~~~~~~~

Dean headed into town to use the library and their Internet, but information on Tikoloshes was pretty thin and contradictory. Information on the murders in Redrock, on the other hand, was easy to get -- but it was all media sensationalism and pretty worthless for his cause. John’s journal unsurprisingly had absolutely nothing to say on the subject. Dean himself only even knew what a Tikoloshe was because ‘name that monster’ had been a favorite car game during the endless miles of his childhood. He knew what a Jiaolong was too, but he’d be damned surprised to trip over one in downtown Topeka.  
  
Bobby emailed him a scan of what had to be stolen police records --the Internet had really made a lot of things easier-- but it wasn’t really useful information. All it gave him was a range of neighborhoods on the edge of town closest to the forest. There was nothing else in common between any of the families that he could find. A few more days to run down leads and do some personal inspection might have proved useful, but another family was going to die once the sun went down, and there wasn’t much he could do about that but go and hope for some kind of miracle to point him in the right direction.  
  
He went back to the cabin to gather what he would need from the root cellar. Keeping an arsenal in the Impala’s trunk had seemed an unreasonable risk once he decided to settle into a home base.  
  
Sam was hanging out on the steps when he pulled back in. He raised his head and flicked his tail, but made no move to rise. Dean hadn’t expected him to. The wolf always acted out of sorts during the daytime when he was going to shift that night.  
  
Dean bypassed the steps and headed for the cellar. By the time he had made a few trips transporting things to the Impala, the wolf had taken a greater interest in his activities and was waiting by the car.  
  
“I’m sorry I won’t be around tonight. I have to run an... errand.” Since his arms were full of weapons, he didn’t think the wolf was going to take that well and wasn’t surprised at the sharp bark and low growl he got for his efforts.  
  
He ignored Sam and dumped the last of his supplies into the trunk, dropping it closed and walking over to the driver’s door. Sam got deliberately in his way, almost tripping him onto the gravel. Dean snarled and leaned his weight into the wolf, causing it to stagger. The wolf bared teeth back at him, but moved out of reach.  
  
“I’ll be back! Go... play with your relatives tonight or something. We can build a fire in the yard tomorrow and I’ll make you some hotdogs and s’mores.”  
  
The wolf walked around the Impala to the passenger door side and sat by it, obviously expectant. Dean rolled his eyes and pulled open his door, sliding inside. He turned the key in the ignition, enjoying a surge of pleasure as she rumbled to life around him. But before he could pull his other foot in and close the door, Sam darted in and sank his teeth into the fold of Dean’s jeans right above his boot, tugging hard enough to almost cause Dean to slide off the seat.  
  
“Stop it, Sam!” Dean jerked his leg free, anger rising when he heard the distinct sound of fabric ripping. “Cut this shit out! People are dying, do you understand that? _Dying_. If I can take care of it tonight, I won’t have to be gone tomorrow. But you are _not_ going to fucking mess with me like this; otherwise, you can go find another person to stalk.”  
  
He knew Sam would probably miss most of the words, but the wolf definitely understood the tone and backed off again. He was clearly not happy, but he wasn’t ripping holes in Dean’s clothes anymore either. Dean slammed the door closed with a last pointed glare and backed the Impala down the gravel driveway. As he turned out onto the main road, his last glimpse of the wolf was it vanishing into the shadows of the afternoon forest.

~~~~~~~

Redrock was a fairly generic suburban community as far as Dean could tell, but it took him almost an hour longer than it should have to reach it. There were few roads from the valley to the outside and they were winding and slow. It was twilight by the time he parked in a Shop&Go that was close to all three murder scenes. He had pockets full of loose salt and a sawed- off with salt-rounds under his jacket, which fortunately hit him about mid-thigh, since his pistol was tucked into a holster around his waist. He had it loaded with regular bullets. In the conflicting mythology on the Tikoloshe, a distinct lack of fondness for iron and salt had been a common thread. Dean had a silver blade in a boot sheath under his jeans as a back-up.  
  
He spent the next few hours skulking around. There were cops watching all of the crime scenes, but he caught what he could on the margins and managed to sneak into one. Blood was dried in deep brownish pools and spattered on walls. No bloody footprints, but weird smears tracking between puddles and to the back door. It was very unusual for Tikoloshe, but out of their native environment and far away from those that had summoned them, they were probably filling their needs in the basest way they could. There was no time to prepare to banish them properly, but Bobby had speculated that if Dean could destroy their physical forms with the salt or the iron, the disembodied spirits would be forced back to their summoners. Sort of. He hoped. Bobby hadn’t been real forthcoming on what the hell embodied Tikoloshe were doing in North America, but he had seemed certain of his intel.  
  
Hours ticked past slowly as Dean wandered as inconspicuously as possible through quiet, nervous neighborhoods, trying to find anything that would tell him _this_ was the place the monsters would strike.  
  
It was without a doubt the single worst plan he had ever had in his life. He could _feel_ his father rolling over in his grave.  
  
But there hadn’t been time for anything else. If he failed tonight, he would grab a few hours of sleep at a motel and spend tomorrow in research to hopefully increase his chances for the next night. But it wasn’t going to take many more bodies before he told Bobby to forget his discretion and find a real expert, because Dean knew his job, but he didn’t know crap about African monsters, and getting up to speed was going to cost lives.  
  
It was only about an hour before dawn when his attention was snared by something out of place. After being stopped twice by paranoid cops wanting to know his business and barely making it away the second time without getting hauled down to the station, Dean had taken to the backyards and bushes. It would be more of an outcry if he was caught, but the odds of that happening were lower slinking around in the shadows, and it was probably not on the street side that he would find the clues he was looking for anyway.  
  
The row of houses he was currently investigating backed up to the slopes and dense woods of the valley forest, as he had come to think of it, thick with underbrush this close to civilization. He was walking past a pale- colored two-story when the barks and whines of a dog caught his attention and he veered to investigate closer. The house was dark, but a sliding-glass door that fronted a pool deck was cracked just enough for the Germen Sheppard, obvious in the bright light of the full moon overhead, to stick his muzzle in and whine. Then he would back up and bark a few times, before going back to the crack.  
  
“Here, boy,” Dean called softly, crouched on one side of the chain-link fence. When the dog trotted over to investigate and seemed friendly enough, Dean vaulted the fence and crept closer to the house. The door hadn’t been left unlocked; even a cursory inspection showed that the metal lock had been wrenched open by sheer muscle. Nothing human could have levered that kind of force and left that type of damage. Dean slid the shotgun out and held it ready, carefully pushing the door further open to slip inside. He moved it back into place once he was through, to keep the dog out; the last thing he needed was to have the animal underfoot or giving him away.  
  
The moonlight through the double glass doors let Dean see inside the open living room well enough without anything so obvious as turning on a light. He didn’t really want to see any better anyway; the eviscerated corpse of a woman sprawled on the carpet was quite visible enough. The air stank of death and the still quiet was making all the hairs on his neck stand up. His finger tightened on the shotgun as he caught sight of a backpack and a child’s sneaker lying beside the couch.  
  
Dean found a staircase and headed up; testing each step individually to make sure they wouldn’t squeak. The grisly discovery downstairs was nothing to the bodies of the children, half devoured and ripped apart in their beds, but Dean steeled himself against his reaction and focused on finding their killers. That was the only thing he could do for them now.  
  
Sweat slicked his grip and he was almost dizzy with adrenaline. There were no monsters upstairs, but there was also no master bedroom. He headed back down to do a more thorough search of the lower level.  
  
He hadn’t even noticed the hallway off the other side of the kitchen. He chalked it up to nerves, lack of sleep and being damn unprepared, but it still needled him. Dean knew what his father would have had to say about such a rookie mistake. The soft, wet, tearing sound coming from inside the bedroom as he crept closer alerted Dean that he’d hit jackpot. The figure crouched over the bed feeding from the man’s body was only a little shorter than Dean himself, covered in shaggy, dark fur and with a heavy ridge of bone crowning its head that gleamed in the moonlight through the high window that ran almost the length of the room.  
  
Dean risked two more quick steps then leveled the gun at the base of the Tikoloshe’s neck and squeezed the trigger. The creature fell forward over the body and in moments was dissolving into some sort of foul smelling ichor. Dean dropped the shotgun to his side and scratched at his neck. Well. That had certainly gone easier than expected. And with any luck, the nasty little thing was winging its way on back to its proper place in the universe. He hoped it had a good, long chat with whomever had summoned it in the first place.  
  
Dean headed back to the sliding doors to make his escape. The house was silent, but as he stepped from the kitchen into the living room, some sixth sense that was as deeply ingrained as the sound of his own voice made him dodge to the right. That was all that saved him from getting his throat ripped open as another Tikoloshe materialized in front of him and swiped at his face with a razor-clawed hand.  
  
When the attack failed, it took advantage of Dean being off-balance from the dodge to throw itself on him bodily, carrying them both to the floor, shotgun flying out of reach. The pistol was pinned to his side beneath his jacket and the heavily muscled monster doing its level best to kill him. Getting the knife was completely out of the question as Dean strained muscles trying to keep claws from ripping into his torso and equally sharp teeth from sinking into his throat. When he felt the claws tear into his skin as he was overpowered, he spared a last thought for hoping the next person the wolf latched into had cable and wouldn’t mind the fur on the furniture, when suddenly the Tikoloshe was hauled off his body and a furious snarling filled the room.  
  
Dean scrambled to his feet and just stared for a moment. Sam, naked and covered in what looked like scratches, dirt and other forest debris, was rolling across the carpet, struggling with the Tikoloshe. And for the moment, backed by his own supernatural strength and what looked like a towering rage, he even appeared to have the upper hand.  
  
Dean winced as they rolled over part of the corpse. The squelch of the blood-soaked carpet broke his momentary freeze and he lunged for the shotgun. Sam might have been holding his own for the moment, but the Tikoloshe outclassed him too and the tables could turn at any second.  
  
“Sam, move!” Dean barked. The werewolf kicked free of the shaggy beast and Dean fired.  
  
The monster slammed back into the couch but was still moving, so Dean stepped in closer and fired again straight into its face. This time, it slumped down and began dissolving like the first had.  
  
Dean was still fighting for breath when he turned to check Sam. The shifter was backing away from the Tikoloshe’s quickly vanishing form, wrinkling his nose and shaking his head. Dean felt a pang of sympathy for heightened senses, but it was quickly forgotten as Sam caught his eye and the heat in the look sent something sizzling through his own blood.  
  
The werewolf advanced with deliberate steps. Naked, his arousal was obvious, and Dean felt his own jeans growing tight. The monsters were dead, the case was done, and all that extra adrenaline still singing in his blood was very interested in the six-plus-feet of good looks and muscles stalking towards him.  
  
When the shifter was so close that Dean could feel the warmth of Sam’s body even through his own clothes, he honestly couldn’t remember why he had been resisting Sam at all.  
  
Sam’s first touch was hesitant, but Dean’s wasn’t. After that, it was a confusing tangle as to how they ended up on the carpet, four hands pulling at Dean’s jeans and finally getting them shoved down low enough that he could get some of the friction from Sam’s body against his cock. Sam seemed to be trying to eat part of Dean’s face, which was distracting and irritating, even in the heat of the moment, until it occurred dimly to Dean that Sam was probably trying to kiss him. He grabbed the wolf by the hair, forcing him to hold his head still, then plunged his own tongue into Sam’s mouth even as he bucked, rubbing together skin slicked with precome, encouraging Sam to move with him. Dean ignored the burn of the carpet against his bare skin as nerve endings sparked with the overwhelming build of urgency. Release was a white buzz of pleasure across his senses and he clutched at Sam’s back, leaving marks as the wolf growled low in his ear and rode out his own orgasm.  
  
Seconds later, the slam of a car door out front jolted Dean back to the reality of the situation and he shoved Sam aside and struggled to get his jeans back into place. He had fired three shotgun blasts before dawn in a neighborhood already made paranoid by recent murders. His little exercise in hormonal idiocy could only be chalked up to Sam making him _completely stupid_ , and it was likely only luck the front door hadn’t been kicked in while his jeans were around his knees.  
  
Because _that_ was a picture he wanted in his official police jacket.  
  
Sam stood and stretched, clearly pleased with himself and not seeming terribly concerned about anything, then headed over to the window.  
  
“Stop it!” Dean hissed, finally getting to his feet and doing up the last button. “Stay away from there!”  
  
Dean couldn’t see if Sam rolled his eyes at him in the dark, but there was definitely a set to his shoulders that implied it. The werewolf crouched, twitching the curtain aside almost imperceptibly to look out front. Dean kneed him over and took his own look, then started cursing under his breath. Sam didn’t look quite so happy anymore either. The biggest miracle was how the crowd assembled out front had stayed quiet enough not to get his attention sooner, even with the... distraction. Through the pre-dawn haze, he could make out people in nightgowns being forcefully directed back to their homes. Dean wasn’t sure what the cops were waiting for, but he didn’t think they were going to wait much longer.  
  
He crept to the back door and glanced out, a new torrent of hissed four-letter words spilling from his mouth. There were people back there too. Only a couple, but a couple was more than enough. Suddenly, the lightening haze struck a new fear into him. Being arrested would be bad enough, but Sam was within minutes of changing. Abruptly, Dean reprioritized his ‘worst case scenario’.  
  
“Sam.” He grabbed the shifter’s arm to make sure he had his undivided attention. “I’m going to go out the door.” Dean pointed to himself and then to the front door in emphasis. “You,” he poked Sam in the chest, “are going to go out the back door as soon as you hear me start yelling. Understand?”  
  
The werewolf followed Dean’s gestures, wrinkled his brows for a moment, then his eyes grew wide and he shook his head. “No!”  
  
“Yes!” Dean snapped back. “They can’t find out about you.”  
  
Sam was still shaking his head, holding Dean’s arm even tighter than Dean had grabbed him. “No! Us!”  
  
Dean had become skilled at translating Sam’s abbreviated speech, but he didn’t have time to engage in their usual back and forth.  
  
“ _Us_ won’t get away without a-- something has to distract them. I’m going to distract them. We don’t have time to fight about it.” He shoved Sam toward the window over the kitchen sink that was partially occluded by huge, fluffy-looking bushes. Sam could slip out that way, hang in the greenery all the way to the back of the deck area, then be in the forest cover with less than ten feet of open space. Once in the forest, Dean didn’t worry about the wolf; he just had to hope he could get someplace out of sight before he changed. The change seemed to only take seconds, but it would only take one camera to fuck everything up. Dean’s biggest concern was still Sam getting arrested too. He shoved harder when the werewolf didn’t move on his own, then turned away to check out front again. This needed to be timed right.  
  
A metallic clunk from behind him made him spin and he stared as Sam, with a determined look on his face, plunked the kitchen microwave down in the middle of the living room, nudging aside part of the corpse to do so, then plugged it in. It was an older model, with a twist -timer and a dirty looking case, but Dean didn’t see anything about it that should have attracted Sam’s interest. Certainly not more so than something like _escape_ should have.  
  
“Fuck! _Sam_ \--” The faint sound a siren and someone shouting out front distracted him and he darted back to check the curtain, sparing a derisive thought for civilian operations. He ignored the total disaster his own operation had been in the assessment. _He_ was on vacation; they didn’t have an excuse.  
  
The sun edged over the horizon just as Dean heard a low, broken whine from the kitchen; it ended with a very animal growl and Dean felt a surge of relief. That was one problem solved. As long as they didn’t shoot Sam on principle. On the other hand, the rising sun had eliminated almost any chance Dean had of getting away unseen.  
  
Dean was heading for the kitchen window himself when the wolf slunk past him on its way into the living room, tail so low it was almost on the ground --probably from the stress of the change-- and some kind of can in its mouth.  
  
“Sam? We gotta go. You can play with the microwave at the cabin.”  
  
The wolf gave a dispirited growl and went back into the kitchen. The clatter of cans reached Dean’s ear just as a bullhorn shattered the silence of the neighborhood, demanding that he throw down any weapons and exit through the front door or they were going to come in after him. It sounded fairly routine and Dean barely paid it any attention as Sam slunk past him with another can in his mouth.  
  
“What the hell?” Dean started to follow him into the living room. Sam returned and growled at him before he could take more than a step or two. Dean ignored it, but Sam wasn’t kidding; he bared his teeth in a full snarl like Dean had never seen before and backed Dean up to the sink. Once Dean hit the counter, the wolf sat back like he was perfectly calm. Dean scowled and started to step towards him again but as soon as he moved, Sam was back on all fours, snarling and bristling. Dean paused thoughtfully, then looked at where he was.  
  
“You... want me to go out the window?” Dean pointed at the glass. The wolf nodded. “I was heading there anyways, but it’s not going to work, Sam. There’s already people back there and it’s getting light.”  
  
The wolf rolled its eyes at him and gave soft bark, looking meaningfully over Dean’s shoulder.  
  
Dean shrugged. He could get arrested just as easily in the back as in the front. Carefully, he slid the glass open, then climbed into the dense shadows of the overgrowth. Through the leaves, he could see the German Sheppard that had first clued him into the trouble at the house pacing anxiously against the back of the fence, no doubt driven there by Sam’s sudden appearance on the scene. Dogs seemed to give the usual garden variety shapeshifters plenty of space, and he imagined Sam being a _wolf_ probably got him even more respect.  
  
He listened intently to the sounds from inside the house, but instead of the click of Sam’s nails on the tile as the wolf walked back towards the kitchen, he heard a bell-like ding, then a soft ticking sound. Sam almost knocked him down as the wolf abruptly sailed through the open window, hitting the covered ground and sinking teeth into Dean’s pant leg, urging him down.  
  
Dean’s eyes grew huge as he put together what should have been obvious five minutes ago. Aerosols and the microwave. Aerosols _in_ the microwave. It _would_ have been obvious had it been another hunter at his side. He opened his mouth to... well, he wasn’t quite sure, maybe congratulate Sam on a successful application of his television education to the real world again, but it was moot because any noise he started to make was drowned out by the explosive force of the fireball that was suddenly rolling out from the living room.  
  
Shouts and curses erupted from around them as the people loitering in the back made a sudden dash for the front. Dean and Sam were already in motion. Not everyone surrounding the house had run towards the front, a professionalism that Dean grudgingly admired, but enough had that they were able to slide over the fence and vanish into the tree line without raising any cries of pursuit.

~~~~~~~

Dean followed Sam through a nightmare mountain scramble. Every time he wanted to stop to try and catch his breath or check his position, the wolf was grabbing hold of his clothes and urging him on. He climbed over boulders and steep slopes, and through gullies that were still brimming with deep shadows the sun hadn’t banished yet, where he could only follow Sam by keeping the fingers of one hand twisted into the wolf’s thick ruff. Eventually, Dean crawled through a freezing mountain stream where it passed into a natural tunnel through the side of a cliff and was grateful to be able to stand, frozen and soaked through, on the other side.  
  
The sun was high by the time Sam finally let him stop and rest, and it took Dean a few minutes to realize that in the several hours he had been following blind in the wolf’s wake, they had crossed over the mountains behind Redrock and into the deep valley sandwiched between the ranges that encircled the low plain where Sunvalley was. The valley Alan had told him about, where humans seldom went, and never more than once.  
  
Sam’s home.  
  
A warm weight leaned against his leg and he looked down at the wolf. It was watching him back. Dean smiled, then tightened his arms around himself as another violent shiver wrenched through him. Without the constant movement to keep him warm, the cold October air and the trip through the water --while no doubt effective at throwing off the scent hounds-- was going to kill him. Sam tugged at the clinging denim of his pants and Dean wearily followed after him. He trusted Sam.  
  
Besides, freezing to death in the wolves’ valley was preferable to rotting for the rest of his life in prison. It would be a better death than his dad had suffered.  
  
But death didn’t seem to be in Sam’s plans. After a long, timeless trek downwards into the shadows towards the river that Dean had only caught silvery glimpses of from higher up, the wolf hunched down and crawled through a small space behind a boulder that Dean didn’t even recognize as an opening until Sam disappeared into it. After a moment, Sam’s muzzle reappeared through the opening and he gave another one of those short, commanding barks. Dean eyed the size of the opening dubiously, but got down on his knees to make the attempt. It was pretty obvious it was going to take a lot of squirming, so he stuffed his coat in ahead and spent the next few minutes leaving skin on the rough rocks of the natural cave.  
  
Inside, he wouldn’t have said it was spacious, but a quick feel around with his hands showed that he could sit up without banging his head, and the walls were far enough apart that he couldn’t touch them both at the same time with his arms outstretched. It was definitely warmer. He was still shivering, even after the struggle to get inside, but not with the sort of deadly cold that was a serious danger. As he sat letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, he became aware that it wasn’t just Sam and him in the cave. The little rustles and sounds of breathing definitely indicated others. He reminded himself firmly that he _trusted_ the wolf.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
The soft greeting got him a tongue swiped across his face and then Sam was tugging again. Dean reluctantly crawled with him deeper into the darkness. Then froze when another shaggy form brushed against him and started sniffing. Then another. They seemed especially interested in his waist and Dean felt himself flush as he had a sudden, vivid recollection of what he and Sam had been up to before the intervention of the cops. His life hadn’t been great, but it sure had been less _weird_ before Sam entered his life. Even for a hunter, the werewolf had added entire dimensions of _strange_ that Dean was pretty certain no one else he knew had to deal with.  
  
There was some soft squeaking and a high-pitched whine from off to his right. He was surrounded by so much warm fur pushing against him that he wasn’t quite sure how he ended up flat on his ass surrounded on all sides, but he wasn’t uncomfortable, and after a few minutes, quite warm. He reached out blindly, trying to get a better idea of what the geography was. One hand hit a smaller ball of fur, which wriggled under his hand, and he was shocked to realize he was touching a cub, or a puppy, whatever the hell a little wolf was. The wonder filled him when he realized that the squirming, pudgy bundle of loose fur and sharp teeth could one day turn into a man like Sam. There was a soft growl from one of the wolves keeping him warm. It wasn’t Sam’s growl, but it wasn’t threatening either -- just a warning. Dean hastily retracted his hand.  
  
Something worried at his hip. Dean shifted, trying to get a hand down to his pocket to shoo it away. But before he could make contact, whatever it was pulled away, ripping his car keys from his pocket. He saw the silhouette of a wolf crawling back out of the cave with the shine of the jangling metal in its mouth. Dean started to yell an objection, but then slumped back. It obviously had something in mind, and Dean was obviously not going to be able to catch it. He was warm, and safe, and exhausted. As Dean relaxed into the living pile of fur, the last thing he thought before falling asleep was a fervent hope that none of Sam’s furry relatives tried to drive his car.

~~~~~~~

Two days later, Dean finally made it to his cabin. He was tired and filthy, but other than some random scrapes and the injuries inflicted by the Tikoloshe, healthy. Sam was frisking in the grass around him, seeming none the worse for wear after what had been a grueling trial in stamina and endurance for Dean.  
  
Sam hadn’t come back the first night Dean had spent with the wolves, and Dean had no idea where he had been. But Sam had been waiting the next morning when Dean, dry and aching from sleeping so long in weird positions, squirmed free of the cave. He had stayed by Dean’s side after that, for that day as they finally reached the river, that night as he curled up in yet another shallow cave with more of what Dean had to assume were Sam’s relatives, and the next day as they made the brutal hike from the valley floor. It was less than an hour before sunset when Dean finally stumbled into his own yard and sank onto the steps of his cabin. He stared blankly at the Impala parked in the drive.  
  
It had worried him somewhat, knowing the Impala was parked in that grocery store parking lot close to all four of the crimes scenes. Whatever disdain he might normally have for police methodology, it wouldn’t take them _that_ long to get suspicious of a fine car like his baby clearly abandoned in that neighborhood. But... apparently, that wasn’t a problem. Dean had to assume Sam’s rough and hasty trek up the mountainside had killed any chance of being tracked that way -- and so Dean had to admit with some surprise that he was probably away clean. There was nothing at the house except some blood to connect him to the place, and without a sample to compare it to...  
  
The Tikoloshe were banished and were not going to be killing anyone else.  
  
And his other concern, his little adrenaline-fueled _indiscretion_ with Sam, wasn’t something he was going to have to deal with for another four weeks.  
  
Sometimes life worked out okay.

  
  
**Chapter Ten**

"Now the hungry lion roars,  
And the wolf behowls the moon."  
                                                                  ~Shakespeare, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, v.1.379

  
The Tikoloshe were gone and the cops never came knocking on Dean’s door, but the third of his little problems didn’t fall out quite the way he had planned.  
  
Dean had assumed he wouldn’t have to deal with Sam and the fallout from screwing him in the middle of a crime scene until Sam changed back into his human form, but Sam didn’t seem to share Dean’s view on that. Dean had to admit Sam’s perspective on the matter was probably pretty different from his own, but fending off the advances of an amorous wolf for days on end had pushed him to the end of his patience.  
  
After the first time or two that the wolf had crossed Dean’s very clear line on personal boundaries -- poking a cold nose into places Dean considered highly off-limits while he was drying his hair after a shower, burrowing under the covers and snuffling heavily into Dean’s armpits and wriggling up a lot closer than was usually allowed-- Dean put his foot down and tossed Sam out.  
  
The wolf whined and growled and generally acted endlessly pathetic, but for five days, when Dean went inside, he closed the door on Sam. _No_ meant _no_ , and if Sam didn’t want to acknowledge that, then he could damn well stay outside.  
  
On the sixth day, Dean finally relented under the terribly pleading looks and apologetic head hanging, even going so far as to make the wolf his own bowl of popcorn as a sort of peace offering. Sam perked up a little at that, but after slinking inside, he stayed to his half of the living room, leaving Dean strictly alone.  
  
Dean had expected to be relieved, but it was actually depressing as hell. Like a cross between having kicked a puppy and betrayed a friend. He put up with it through three episodes of _Law And Order_ , a show Dean usually skipped but he knew Sam loved, before he put his own bowl aside and slid onto the bare wooden floor. He had Sam’s attention as soon as he had moved and it only took extending a hand to have the wolf practically in his lap.  
  
Dean rubbed behind Sam’s ears for a few minutes, letting the wolf press his face into his chest before sighing and pushing the animal back until he could see the hazel of his eyes. “Sam. I... can’t do that. What you want.”  
  
The wolf looked so sad. Dean couldn’t even point to what it was specifically in the wolf’s demeanor, but there was something, maybe the look in his eyes that was just so _incredibly_ sad... He whined and tried to lean into Dean again, but Dean locked his elbow, holding him at bay.  
  
“What I mean is...” He licked his lips and trailed off, trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say.  
  
Two and a half weeks of slowly getting used to the idea had made a few things clear to Dean. He _wanted_ to have sex with Sam. Sam was perfectly capable of making his own decisions. And if the only thing holding him back was some social convention, well -- it wasn’t like Dean had ever given much of a flip for social conventions before. Besides, Sam wasn’t _really_ a wolf. Dean firmly ignored the small part of his mind that pointed out Sam wasn’t really human either.  
  
Making the decision, however unsure he was about it, had made something tight loosen in his chest. He wasn’t going to take it back; telling Sam ensured that, if nothing else. The wolf had been an incredible pain after an adrenaline-fueled rub-off that all together lasted about three minutes. Dean figured if he tried to cut Sam off after giving him actual permission and a real romp in the sheets, he would probably find himself hit over the head and dragged back into that god-forsaken valley until he changed his mind.  
  
Dean cleared his throat. “I don’t mean we can’t have sex ever. I just mean... not like this. I can’t do it with you in, you know, your wolf form.”  
  
Sam cocked his head and gave one slow tail-twitch.  
  
“It’s a human thing. I know you probably don’t understand, but it’s a _very important_ human thing. But, uh, when you _are_ human, and if you want to -- well, I guess I’m on board. Willing. To have sex. Did you get all that?” He gave the wolf a critical look, or he tried, but it was hard when a hundred pounds of fur and enthusiasm suddenly knocked him onto his back and proceeded to lick his face from chin to hairline. Repeatedly.  
  
Dean fended him off; there wasn’t much he hated in his current life _more_ than having Sam’s very long, very wet tongue covering him with wolf-spit. It was tempting to tell him they could have sex as long as he _never did that again_ , but that wasn’t fair. Whatever they had between them was bigger than having to wash his face again, but he did make sure he gave the wolf a good glare when he finally managed to heave Sam off and stalk to the bathroom. Sam followed so closely, he was practically standing on his feet, and no matter how Dean snapped and snarled for the rest of the week, nothing he did so much as dented the wolf’s good spirits.  
  
And then it was the night before the full moon.

~~~~~~~

Dean had spent the last two days before the start of Sam’s shifting in various states of nerves. He was annoyed with himself for it, but most of his sexual encounters, with men or women, had started in a bar, ended happily a few minutes or hours later in a bed, and both parties walked away satisfied. Never to meet again. He had really only ever had one relationship before that could be considered ‘serious’, but that was mostly her doing. It had never bothered him before, but as he watched the sun sink into the mountains on a day he had started thinking of in capital letters, he wished he had more experience in sustaining relationships. Or even a clue how to start a seduction that didn’t involve liquor.  
  
Sam _mattered_.  
  
Though, really, how much practice with human relationships was going to be helpful with a man who spent most of his life furry with four legs? And he didn’t need _seduction_ , all he needed was to stop actively fending him off.  
  
When Sam walked out of the forest only minutes after sunset, a spring in his step and a smile of greeting on his face that Dean returned with a raised eyebrow and a good head-to-toe glance-over, there was no question about what the first step in the night’s activities was going to be.  
  
“You’ll like this; stop squirming,” Dean growled, exasperated, a few minutes later, after dragging Sam down the hallway to the bathroom. Sam, dirt-smudged and fragrant, was evading Dean’s efforts to crowd him into the shower. The wolf had found showers interesting, but after Dean refused to help him wash anymore, not interesting enough to bother with during most of his human visits. He wasn’t dirty enough for Dean to generally force the issue, and having him bounce in and out of his bed au naturalle encouraged Dean to keep the sheets changed. At least once a month.  
  
But there was absolutely no way Dean was going to do anything involving closer contact until he had personally seen every inch of Sam’s skin scrubbed. He had no problems with spur of the moment fun or a good, unplanned roll in the hay, but this wasn’t spontaneous and he could smell Sam from four feet away. The wolf, oddly, never seemed to have more than a faint foresty scent to him, maybe a little musky, if Dean actually buried his nose in the fur, but whatever kept the wolfy odor to a minimum did not translate to a human form.  
  
Fighting with Sam on the issue was only going to get one of them hurt in what would probably be an abrupt fall onto the slippery, golden-brown tiles of the master bath. It was pointless, anyway; there was a much easier way to coax his reluctant guest into the shower. Dean rolled his eyes at his own stupidity, stripped and climbed into the warm spray himself. After that, getting Sam into the shower was more an exercise in finding room for all of everyone’s limbs. Dean was grateful the stall was a little oversized.  
  
After four months together, with Dean spending time with Sam in both his forms, and Sam’s total disdain for clothes, there was little about his body that was a mystery to Dean. But being aware of him as a friend and companion and having him as a lover were completely different things.  
  
Dean had a washcloth and a goal, but he found himself distracted by Sam’s pleasure in even the most casual of his touches. He started with Sam’s face and worked his way down, savoring the freedom to do what he had wanted to do for months but had stopped himself from ever seriously considering.  
  
He was not at all surprised to see that Sam was fully erect by the time he ran the washcloth down to his waist. The surprise was how patient Sam was being about it. Other than some shivery breaths and the light touches he brushed over every inch of Dean’s skin he could reach, Sam seemed willing to let Dean do what he wanted at his own pace. Dean skipped the area between Sam’s legs, knelt, and went ahead and scrubbed his feet and calves, taking care between each toe and with the sensitive skin behind his knees. Dean paid careful attention to the thick, white scar that curved around his calf. He slowed his pace as he moved up Sam’s thighs and leaned his head against Sam’s hip and reached around to slide the cloth between the rounded, firm muscles of his ass. At the same time, he flicked out his tongue along the side of the swollen shaft right in front of his face.  
  
The low whine that escaped Sam’s throat wasn’t entirely human, but Dean was well familiar with the sentiment behind it. He’d made similar enough sounds in the same circumstances, so he took pity, and as he nudged Sam’s legs further apart to make better use of the washcloth, he took the head of Sam’s cock into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the sensitive skin. A sharp crack from above made him pull back and look up -- Sam had slammed his head into the tile, but when Dean started to stand up, Sam tangled his fingers into his hair and pulled Dean’s face back to his groin. Sam didn’t pull so hard Dean couldn’t have resisted, but if Sam wanted him to continue, Dean wasn’t going to argue. Whatever the reason for Sam’s passivity, it was reassuring to know he was in control enough to keep his strength in mind. The werewolf was easily half again as strong as Dean, something Dean tended to forget on a day-to-day basis, but had much more serious implications if he was going to have Sam in his bed for more than sleep.  
  
The soft gasps and whimpers from above as Dean sealed his mouth back over Sam’s cock were as addictive as the slide of hot skin over smooth muscle, and the heavy, salty flavor of the precome. Dean didn’t mind giving blowjobs on the get-one/give-one scale, but this was the first in a long time he could remember actually enjoying it.  
  
Bobby had been insistent that the valley wolves mated exclusively for life, so that meant that whatever they did together, it would all be new ground for Sam. It gave the quiet sounds that spilled from Sam’s lips as he tilted his head up into the spray and flexed his hands against the wet tiles of the shower wall an almost painful sort of honesty. Dean had one hand wrapped around the base of Sam’s shaft, but the other he traced back between his spread legs. Soap had collected in the crevice and Dean’s fingers were well slicked as he gently traced around the clenched muscle there. He didn’t have any specific plans in that direction for the night, but he was curious to see how Sam felt about at least being touched in that sensitive spot. The answer was apparently pretty good, because Dean had hardly slipped a fingertip in when the wolf spread his legs wider, opened himself even more to Dean’s touch. The invitation was obvious and in short order, Dean was able to slip two fingers in with only a little resistance. He had paused before working the second finger in to slick his fingers with more shampoo, fumbling one-handed while he concentrated on keeping his rhythm with his mouth and the other.  
  
Feeling Sam start to come apart under his hands, Dean pulled back and stood up, knees and jaw aching. That wasn’t how he wanted it to happen their first (second) time. He pressed his own body up against Sam’s and took their cocks together in his hands, slick with soap and water, encouraging Sam to move. The pleasure and sense of power was intense and he lasted only a few strokes before he spilled, semen coating his hand and their combined flesh even as Sam shuddered hard and followed. Dean let go and reached up to grab Sam’s neck, pulling him into a good position to kiss and was surprised when Sam, still panting, continued to stay passive under his touch while Dean explored his mouth. It was true the wolf didn’t have the first practical idea of how to kiss, but the submission with which he was bowing to Dean’s control was unnerving, even if the results had felt incredible.  
  
He scrubbed Sam’s hair afterwards, trying to explain about the stinging, made sure every trace of soap was gone, and then they climbed out of the shower.  
  
Sam watched to see how Dean dried himself and diligently followed suit. It was a better job than he had bothered with when bathing alone and it was a welcome change to not have puddles of water to mop up as Sam followed him to the kitchen, Sam naked as he preferred to be and Dean not bothering with clothes himself. There hardly seemed a point.  
  
They were halfway through the canned chicken and noodle soup Dean had hastily heated up for dinner, when Dean dropped his spoon into his bowl and glared at the subdued wolf.  
  
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, the horrible though suddenly occurring to him that he might have read everything wrong. That maybe Sam had just been riding an adrenaline rush back at the house and didn’t have any interest in any of this; his attempted molestation of Dean just a bad interpretation of wolfy friendship. Maybe Bobby didn’t know crap about what he was talking about with mating-bonds and the valley wolves, after all. “You’re acting like--” Dean broke off as Sam looked at him curiously. Acting like he had after Dean had kicked him out. Placating, submissive, desperate not to get banished again.  
  
No, Dean didn’t think he had interpreted anything wrong. He just thought he was a jackass.  
  
“Sam.” Dean hoped his tone would convey anything that might get missed word-wise. “This has to be about us. I’m not going to get mad at you and throw you out of my bed. I mean, yeah, this is my house and I have some rules you have to follow while you’re here, like no peeing inside and no eating my guests, but as far as the sex goes, as long as you don’t hurt me on purpose and stop if I say stop, then it’s your show too. You don’t need my permission to do pretty much whatever you want.”  
  
The wolf gave his usual frustrating indications of comprehension --absolutely none at all-- and went back to his food as soon as Dean was done speaking. But Dean wasn’t imagining the little sidelong, speculative looks from Sam’s side of the table, and he was looking forward to the after dinner entertainment with some anticipation.

~~~~~~~

They hadn’t bothered with sheets, sleeping hadn’t been high on either of their agendas, and they were plenty warm without them. Dean had shared his body with many people in his twenty-four years, but never one who treated him like the bend of his ankle and the curve of his ass were deserving of equal attention and fascination. Without the restraint of having to worry about some boundary he was in danger of crossing, Sam seemed to feel that every inch of Dean needed to be carefully explored and tasted. And he wasn’t shy about pinning Dean in place to get a better angle if Dean moved before Sam had mapped whatever he was working on to his satisfaction. It was a novel experience for Dean, who couldn’t ever remember being with a lover who outclassed him in the muscle department, but not one that concerned him. It was _Sam_ ; he trusted him, and as the night wore on in a strange, intoxicating mix of passion and communion, Dean couldn’t remember ever feeling as connected to another person as he felt when they lay twined together. It felt... _right_. Which was way sappier than Dean had ever _imagined_ feeling, but it was okay, as long as he only admitted it to himself.  
  
Shortly before dawn, Dean woke up and rolled to his side, leaning up on one elbow and letting his eyes drift over the sleeping form of the man sharing his bed. Sam looked entirely human, and Dean’s body still carried the bruises and aches of hours of sexual exploration as a reminder that Sam _felt_ entirely human.  
  
But he wasn’t. And that was the core of Dean’s problem. Sam _wasn’t_ human, and Dean was, and a hunter. While it was nice to think about blowing it all off and settling down in Sunvalley with Sam to live out his days in lazy sunshine and warm, fire-lit nights, the time he took from the job could cost others their lives. He had already been sidelined longer than he had planned. His dad’s death was still a deep ache in his mind and his heart, but the thought didn’t make him want to reach for a bottle anymore. In fact, if it wasn’t for Sam and the distraction he represented, he probably would have been gone weeks ago.  
  
Before Dean could head any further down that moody avenue, Sam’s eyes fluttered open. He stared back at Dean for a moment, then a smile curved his lips and he slid one arm over Dean’s back and up until he could stroke long fingers through the hair at the back of Dean’s head. Hair he normally kept cropped short, but after half a year as a civilian was long enough that it actually had to be combed. Sam tugged him in and pressed a noisy kiss to Dean’s cheek. Dean was grinning when Sam finally leaned back.  
  
“Tomorrow, I’m teaching you how to kiss the right way.”  
  
Sam grinned back at him and then slipped out of bed, Dean feeling not a shred of guilt over ogling his ass as Sam padded out the door. A quick glance at the clock told Dean there was less than five minutes before official sunrise.  
  
Sam would be a wolf until sunset again, and Dean had a variety of chores to do, but lying in his warm bed on sheets that smelled strongly of Sam and sex, he wondered, for what might have been the first time in his life, if there might be a future for him that didn’t revolve around the hunt. He could certainly stay through the winter and find out.

  
  
**Chapter Eleven**

"Only a mountain has lived long enough  
to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf."  
                            ~Aldo Leopold

  
Winter was unusually mild for all of the northern United States, and Sunvalley was no exception. Even deep into December there were only inches on the ground, and the roads were clear as far as anyone could care to travel.  
  
It had been three months since he had started a more personal relationship with Sam and none of the wonder or excitement had worn off. He only had his lover for the three days a month, but he had his companionship nearly constantly. Dean missed not having human Sam around, but that was more because he missed the casual intimacy he could share with Sam in his human form that he refused to share with the wolf. But he still had the company and the companionship that had founded their relationship and he enjoyed it immensely. And when Sam _was_ human... well, the shifter was a quick learner and apparently spent a great deal of his four- legged time thinking up things to do to Dean during the three nights Dean would let him touch him _like that_. Not that Dean had any problems with it, he certainly spent a lot of his own frustration imagining what he was going to do with Sam. It was just a little unnerving to feel the weight of Sam’s gaze sometimes and _know_ that the wolf lounging on his couch shedding all over the place was planning out absolutely filthy things he intended to do to Dean, just as soon as Dean would stand still long enough to let him.

~~~~~~~

Late December and Sam was shifted for the last time of the year. He’d spent the afternoon in his fur form, dragging Dean through the eves of the forest, and Dean had to admit some of what Sam had shown him was absolutely amazing. Frozen waterfalls and ice crystallized as delicate as lace, a massive bull elk with a rack at least half as wide across as Dean was tall, and a pristine glade over which bald eagles rode thermals as they kept their eyes out for likely prey. Well, pristine until two smaller wolves barreled out of nowhere and bowled Sam completely over. Dean whipped his pistol out by reflex at the unexpected assault, but Sam gave a sharp bark in his direction that needed no interpretation and Dean re-holstered the weapon. He watched, amused, as Sam cavorted in obvious play through the unbroken snow with what had to be cousins, or --it occurred to Dean suddenly-- maybe even siblings.  
  
That thought preoccupied his mind while Sam thoroughly trounced the other wolves and returned, triumphant and panting, to Dean’s side.  
  
They returned to the cabin through the deepening twilight. The day had been one of adventure and exercise and Dean was looking forward to an evening of slow exploration and a very different sort of exercise. He knew when the scent of his arousal was strong enough to reach Sam’s sensitive nose because the wolf started tripping as he kept glancing at Dean with wide eyes. Dean just whistled and picked up the pace. He wanted to be at the cabin when Sam shifted, the night would be too short as it was, and the sooner they got started, the more fun they could have.  
  
But the best laid plans often went amiss. Dean grabbed some more wood from the pile against the shed and headed in as soon as they arrived. He was warm under his jacket but his hands and feet, not to mention his face, were freezing. Sam didn’t follow him and Dean wasn’t surprised. The wolf was within a few minutes of changing and his natural fur would keep him warm until then. Dean made extra sure not to lock the door by reflex, though; he didn’t like the idea of Sam outside buck naked in the snow. The shifter had survived some twenty odd years in the wild before Dean showed up, but he suspected that had more to do with deep caves and the fur of his relatives than a supernatural resistance to frostbite.  
  
He was just starting to feel his toes again and was digging through his clean laundry for sweats when he heard the front door slam and Sam’s voice call plaintively, “Towel?”  
  
Spying one tossed over a chair, Dean grabbed it and headed out to see what the problem was, then sighed. Sam was coated in splatters of mud. Dean supposed he really should have expected that after all of the roaming around they had done earlier, but he planned to have his mouth on a lot of that skin in the very near future and he didn’t like dirt that much.  
  
“Shower.”  
  
“No.” Sam held out his hand for the towel, a set look on his face.  
  
Dean tossed it to him and shrugged, pulling his own shirt off over his head and letting it fall to the floor as he headed back down the hallway.  
  
“Suit yourself. _I’m_ taking one; warm up faster that way. I guess I can take it alone.” He stifled a smirk when Sam almost beat him to the bathroom.  
  
Sam was cooperative enough during the shower itself, but he got growly when after he was clean Dean unceremoniously tossed him out after only a little mauling instead of indulging in the sort of games that were Sam’s favorite part of human bathing. Dean had plans, though, and he wanted to be clean, fed and wrapped up in his warm bed with his warm blankets and his warm lover, not running the hot water out in the middle of something and getting out of the shower almost as cold as he got in. So Sam got kicked out while Dean finished washing.  
  
But apparently Dean was just cursed, because his hair was full of shampoo when he heard yelling from the living room and he had to dart out of the shower and down the hallway to find out what the hell was going on. No one should have been showing up at the cabin anyways, but _Sam_ of all people didn’t need to be the one dealing with unexpected company.  
  
Dean slammed to a halt at the kitchen counter. Bobby was standing right inside his doorway, Sam about three feet away. Both of them were clearly bristling, and both of them stared wide-eyed at Dean as he stormed into the scene.  
  
Dean swallowed his shock to level a finger Sam. “You are _not_ allowed to eat my guests, remember?”  
  
Sam nodded reluctantly, then solemnly handed Dean the towel he took from around his own waist. Sam didn’t mind public nudity; Dean wasn’t quite so blasé. He refused to glance at Bobby’s face while he accepted Sam’s offering and wrapped it around himself.  
  
He wiped soap away from his eyes and turned to Bobby. “Will this wait until I rinse off?”  
  
“Is that a _werewolf?!_ ” Bobby demanded, pointing at Sam. Then he seemed to take in the faint bite marks on Dean’s shoulder and connect them to the hickey on Sam’s neck and his eyes grew huge. “Jesus _fuck_ , Dean.”  
  
That wasn’t an expression Dean could ever remember hearing from Bobby, and he felt a headache building rapidly behind his eyes. Sam picked up on the growing tension and growled. He shut up under the fierce glare Dean turned on him.  
  
“Bobby, I am way too tired to deal with this. I’m going to go rinse the soap out of my hair and get dressed. The two of you are adults; I trust you not to kill each other in the ten minutes I’m going to be gone. Sam, that’s Bobby; Bobby, Sam. And neither one of you had better have any more goddamned holes in your skin than you’ve got right now, when I get back!”  
  
Figuring that was as good of an exit line as any, Dean stalked back to the bathroom to enjoy what little peace he was likely to get for the rest of the night.

~~~~~~~

When Dean finally left the bathroom again, dry and dressed, and headed back towards the living room, he was expecting anything from World War II to a hostile peace, but the soft murmur of voices in apparently calm discussion was a surprise. Especially since Sam barely spoke to him and the two of them were pretty much living together. He stifled the tiny surge of jealousy and went to see what was going on.  
  
Sam and Bobby were sitting on the bare wood of the floor. The fire had been stirred up and wood added, and Sam had pulled on a pair of Dean’s sweatpants. Dirty ones, because Sam would only wear clothes that Dean had already worn, and they were inches too short for his long legs, but the fact that he was clothed at all without an extended battle was a small miracle. The old cedar chest was open and one of the tattered albums was spread across Bobby’s lap. As Dean watched, Sam pointed to one of the figures and Bobby frowned.  
  
“Derek Wilson. Not a relation of yours, I don’t think, but a good hunter. He bought it out in Virginia back in... seventy-five? Seventy-six? Something like that. Car accident. Stupid thing for a hunter to die from.”  
  
“Stupid?” Sam echoed.  
  
“Yeah. You know that word?”  
  
The shifter nodded.  
  
“It was stupid because he spent all his life fighting monsters. And a car killed him. Drinking alcohol and driving his car was a stupid thing to die from. Understand?”  
  
Sam didn’t reply but pointed to another one of the blurry figures on the page.  
  
“Nope. That one I don’t know. He one of your kin?”  
  
Sam squinted at the photo, but after a second, shook his head.  
  
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Dean broke in. “But, uh, what the hell are you doing here, Bobby?”  
  
Bobby started at the sound of his voice. Sam looked up too, but with a casualness that showed he’d been aware of Dean’s presence.  
  
Bobby glared at them both, but Dean just crossed his arms and waited. Sam dragged the album off of Bobby’s lap and carried it over to the couch.  
  
“It’s almost Christmas. You’re just about the closest thing I have to family still around and I know you’ve had a rough year. I just thought it might be nice to drop in on you and spend a few days.”  
  
“You know a lot of hunters that like surprises? ” Dean asked dryly.  
  
Bobby snorted and climbed to his feet. “Well, like you’ve been insisting for months now -- you ain’t a hunter now, are you?  
  
“So you and Sam make up?” Dean nodded towards the couch where Sam was listening, but giving most of his attention to the pages of the photo album. Obviously, he didn’t think Bobby was a threat anymore.  
  
“At least we didn’t _make out_ ,” Bobby snapped.  
  
“Bobby--” Dean began defensively, Sam watching more closely now.  
  
“Can it! I don’t want to hear whatever excuses you have. I warned you about this; we had a freaking discussion about it -- and you went ahead and let it happen anyways. He’s a _wolf_ , Dean. And now he’s _your_ wolf. Which head were you listening to when you decided shagging him was a good idea? And what are you going to do with him when you _leave_?”  
  
“Are you done?” Dean asked levelly.  
  
“Yeah, I’m done.”  
  
“We didn’t _have a discussion_ because this wasn’t something I had to _discuss_ with you. I’m an adult, _he’s_ an adult. Just because he isn’t... properly human, doesn’t mean he needs help making his own decisions! He _chose_ to be with me, and I _chose_ to be with him. It’s between us and you don’t get a fucking say.”  
  
“And when you leave?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“Maybe I won’t.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“You heard me.” Dean tightened his arms. “Maybe I won’t leave. I’ve given my entire life to hunting and saving other people. Dad _literally_ gave his. Mom’s been dead more than twenty years now and I don’t owe it to them to waste my whole life in the shadows for that. I deserve the chance to have something that isn’t death and cheap motel rooms, Bobby! I’m almost happy here; closer that I thought I could be.”  
  
“You _won’t_ be, not when whatever idyllic fantasy you’ve concocted wears off. You think you’re in love and it’s rotted your damned brain. Happy? Stuck in a nowhere town in the middle of the mountains? I know you, boy. One day, you’re going to wake up and miss the road, miss the job, and start feeling trapped. What’s going to happen then, Dean? What’s going to happen to _him_?” Bobby pointed at the couch where Sam had closed the album and looked uncertain of how he should be participating in the conversation.  
  
“ _Nothing_ is going to happen to him,” Dean hissed. “And you don’t know a damn thing about how I feel.”  
  
“Dean--”  
  
“No! I didn’t invite you here. If you just want to bitch at me and try and tell me I’m bad or something for wanting Sam, then you can just get the hell out.”  
  
Bobby shouldered his bag and stormed out without another word.  
  
Dean’s good mood was completely destroyed as he stalked over to flip the locks. He glanced over to Sam, knowing they had both been looking forward to the evening, but Sam wasn’t looking at him. The shifter had set the photo album on the side table and fished the television remote out from between the cushions.  
  
“Popcorn?” Sam asked.  
  
“Sounds good.”  
  
A smile tugged at the corner of Dean’s mouth despite himself as he went to snag a blanket off the bed and toss some popcorn in the microwave. Bobby’s angry words had hit so hard because they were all things Dean had thought about himself, and had to leave unresolved. But whatever happened, he wouldn’t believe that his relationship with Sam was a mistake.

~~~~~~~

When Dean let Sam out the next morning, he was surprised not to hear the sharp bark Sam used when he wanted back inside in his fur form. It had been a good hour since Dean let him out and while it was possible he had headed deeper into the woods to do some wolfy things on his own, Dean had been chopping meat for the wolf’s breakfast and it was odd that he would have taken off without eating first. Sam was certainly capable of feeding himself and often brought game back for Dean to poke dubiously and figure out how to cook, but Dean had gotten used to the morning routine.  
  
Dean opened the front door with a frown, and then looked resigned. Sam _had_ come back, and he wasn’t the only one. The wolf was lying on his back in the powdery snow, wiggling in happiness under the skilled fingers rubbing at his belly and talking to him softly. Dean couldn’t hear what was being said, but it clearly didn’t trouble Sam.  
  
“Bobby.”  
  
Bobby straightened up with one last rub and a pat to Sam’s flank. “Dean.”  
  
Bobby’s tone didn’t give anything away, though Sam gave Dean a _look_ as he brushed past on his way into the house.  
  
“You know he’s not a pet, right? ”  
  
Bobby snorted. “I know what he is, Dean. But he’s got thick fur and no fingers; a good scratch is a good scratch. Besides, I needed to apologize to him. And to you.”  
  
Dean’s shoulders relaxed a little. “You want to come back inside?”  
  
“Let me say this first. I’m not happy about the thing between the two of you.” Dean opened his mouth to tell Bobby exactly how much that concerned him, but Bobby held up one hand for him to wait. “ _But_ , you were right that it’s not really any of my business. You’re an adult, and he’s what he is, and he’s obviously happy here. I still think you’re asking for trouble, but it’s your trouble to ask for. I won’t say another word about it.”  
  
“That’s it?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s it.”  
  
A moment of heavy silence passed between them, “Come on in, Bobby. I was... in a bad mood last night. I’m not gonna say I didn’t mean what I said, but I shouldn’t have said it like that. I--”  
  
“--wasn’t expecting to be jumped,” Bobby finished for him.  
  
“Yeah, something like that.”  
  
“I don’t have to stay, Dean. I can just visit for awhile and get a room in town.”  
  
“Be serious, man. You’ve come all this way. The cabin has a spare bedroom and it will be nice to do Christmas right for once.” Dean eyed the bag over Bobby’s shoulder. It didn’t hang right to just be clothes and a gun or two. “What did you bring?”  
  
Bobby reached into his bag and pulled out a mason jar filled with a clear liquid. He raised an eyebrow.  
  
Dean grinned and shoved the door open. “It will be a _merry_ Christmas anyways.”

~~~~~~~

Bobby was around for about a week. Sam and Dean did a good job of keeping their hands off of each other the first night he stayed, but Bobby must have been picking up on something because he got Dean alone Christmas Eve morning and asked delicately about Sam’s shifting. Delicately for Bobby, anyway. Dean admitted that that would be the last night for the month, and promptly at sunset, Bobby announced a pressing need to visit a bar.  
  
It was the best Christmas present Bobby could have given them, and Sam barely waited for the door to close before he was dragging Dean to the bedroom. It was Sam’s favorite room of the house; Dean figured it reminded him of a den. With, you know, perks. Dean was pretty fond of it himself, and was grateful for the chance to give Sam his present while he was in a form to appreciate it. It was more of a demonstration than something tangible, and Sam must have been shopping in the same catalogue, because Dean certainly felt well gifted by the time he staggered to the shower to clean up a little before Bobby got back.  
  
All in all and despite the rough start, by the time Bobby left, it had been the best holiday Dean could remember and he was sad to see it end.

  
  
**Chapter Twelve**

"Wolves are not our brothers;  
they are not our subordinates, either.  
They are another nation, caught up  
just like us in the complex web of time and life."  
                                ~Henry Beston

  
January, February and March passed in much the same way as December had. The snow continued to be light, the weather cold but not terrible, and Dean was settling down into domesticity with almost disturbing ease.  
  
He and Sam took lots of long walks in the woods, even camping a few times, and there was a surprising amount of maintenance work to keep the property in good shape. Fallen limbs in the forest were okay to supplement his wood pile, but periodically he would head out in Sam’s wake to find a more substantial piece of wood to chop and haul back to the cabin.  
  
At one point, Dean spent an interesting week trying to learn how to bake his own pies, and brought one of the best results of his experimentation to his nearest neighbors, the Martins, in thanks for the help they had given him almost a year ago when he first moved to Sunvalley. Lynnette was surprised, but seemed pleased, and when Dean heard that they were buying their own winter wood because they both worked such long hours, Dean took to hauling it out to their home as well. It was incredibly strenuous work, but it helped keep him in shape.  
  
Surprisingly, they also spent a lot of time at the library. Or Dean did, and Sam spent as much time as he could with his limitations. At first, Dean was just looking for something to occupy some time and figured local history was worthwhile, but he described what he was doing there to a curious Sam and the wolf insisted he wanted to go too.  
  
Dean checked the library hours and found they were open for two hours after sunset. He couldn’t think of a good reason not to bring the wolf in his human form, so he got Sam dressed in sweatpants that were too short for his long legs, a t-shirt, made him wear a sweatshirt on top, stuck some flip-flops on his feet and bundled him into the car. The sheer wonder on Sam’s face as they rumbled through the drifting snow and into the township proper made Dean realize that Sam had never been in the car before. In fact, other than Bobby, he didn’t know if Sam had ever met a person besides himself. It was a very strange thought. Dean had ceased to think of Sam as anything but _Sam_ months ago, and remembering that he was mostly a _wolf_ , well, that was just weird.  
  
Sam got some strange looks at the library over his attire, and Dean suspected the staff, all of whom smiled and welcomed them in, thought Sam had some kind of mental disability. He had managed to restrain Sam from indulging in a need to thoroughly sniff the building, but let it go regarding the books Sam handled. The only way to stop the wolf from inspecting those nose-first would have been to physically restrain him, so Dean just shrugged, flashed the curious staff winning smiles and went about his own research.  
  
Dean was interested in history; Sam was interested in children’s books. At first, Dean assumed he was looking at pictures, but when he checked on Sam, the wolf was tracing letters in a brightly colored spelling book and mouthing things silently to himself. Dean picked up the stack Sam had dragged off the shelf, and a handful of learning videos for very young kids -- and checked the whole lot out. If Sam wanted to learn English, Dean was totally supportive.  
  
Sam spent hours in his fur form watching the brightly- colored tapes and nosing through the books. Dean brought new ones to him when he made his own trips to the library while Sam wasn’t able to be with him, but Sam didn’t seem to be making much progress and Dean had the feeling the wolf was dispirited about it. He tried to be helpful, but Sam seemed to get frustrated easily and would lope off into the woods for hours at a time, leaving Dean wondering what he had done wrong.  
  
They communicated best during the too-short nights they spent in Dean’s bed, where speech and confusion didn’t get in the way of the very personal language they shared. A language of rough caresses and gentling touch, mouthed across sensitive skin damp with sweat and heated with passion. Dean ached each and every time Sam slipped from their bed to greet the sun on his own.

~~~~~~~

It was mid April and Dean was spending an afternoon catching up on local news in his favorite in-town location. If the libraries of his youth and childhood had come with a coffee bar and unlimited fresh cookies, he might have been a better student. But local news only took him about fifteen minutes to cover and he wasn’t ready to go just yet, so he browsed through some of the regional headlines and was quickly absorbed in a missing persons case.  
  
About an hour later, he was in the microfiche room scrolling back more than a century, looking for the roots of a pattern he _knew_ was responsible for the missing woman in Lake Park. Dean had an entire page of notes he had been jotting down and was mentally reviewing his stores wondering how much Vervain the job would take... when he abruptly dropped the pencil and leaned back, disconcerted at how easily he’d fallen back into his old pattern.  
  
Dean called Bobby on his way back to the cabin to let him know about the hunt. Bobby grunted and pointed out that _Dean_ was perfectly free to go take care of the problem. Dean retorted that he had someone waiting for him at home and flipped the phone closed. But the cabin was dark when he pulled in, the television off and the food he had set out untouched. Sam was nowhere to be found.  
  
The wolf was back the next morning, but seemed strangely distant. It wasn’t anything Dean could put a finger on, but there was _something_ that felt off. And when Sam wasn’t being distant, he was being super clingy -- to the point where Dean couldn’t sit on the couch without Sam trying to sprawl across his lap. In bed, the wolf crowded so close, Dean had forgotten what it was like to not climb out of bed with limbs tingling with returning blood flow.  
  
He tried to get an answer out of Sam about what the problem was, but the wolf refused to meet his eyes and invariably slunk off into the forest when he pressed the matter. Frustrated, Dean spent more time in town, but he was smart enough to stay out of bars, and instead spent more and more time in the library. He tried to read some of the so-called classics they had always been going on about in school, but quickly gave them up in favor of combing national newspapers, just... looking. When he found something suspicious, he would give Bobby a head’s up. Bobby didn’t comment on what Dean was doing spending so much time looking for hunts, but there was a quality to his pauses that reminded Dean of the confrontation at Christmas.  
  
Sam was also staying away for longer and longer periods of time. First a few hours, then a day. Then... more than one day. By sunset of the second day the first time Sam pulled that stunt, Dean was greatly concerned. He hiked into the woods with a flashlight and a shotgun, calling. The long hikes he and Sam had taken helped his orientation and Dean was pretty sure he would be able to find the cabin again, unlike his last solo foray. He walked for hours, climbing higher and higher, until he could see all of Sunvalley spread out below him and he sank down onto a rocky shelf and felt like screaming. The snow had only melted in the last few days and the air was crisp and cold. He had no idea how to find Sam, how to find out what had _happened_ to Sam.  
  
He was so preoccupied wracking his brain that it was a few minutes before he noticed he had an audience. About ten feet away on the same rocky outcropping sat three wolves. Dean thought they were young, they were all smaller than Sam was, but they didn’t seem either threatening or threatened. Dean had no way of knowing if they were like Sam, or just regular wolves sharing the valley with the altered packs, but he figured it was worth a try.  
  
“I’m looking for Sam.”  
  
Three stares.  
  
“Sam, uh, crap. I have no idea what you guys would call him. The wolf who lives with me, down there.” Dean pointed roughly down towards where the cabin was and three heads swiveled obediently. Dean gave them all a disgusted look and wrapped his arms around his knees. The sun would rise in a few hours and he could try crossing into the other valley then. Sam had never taken him there again after their escape from Redrock, but Dean though he remembered what the pass looked like.  
  
His furry company grew bored at some point and vanished back into the night.  
  
The horizon was just starting to lighten with approaching dawn when another wolf paced slowly out of the woods. This one was every inch as big as Sam, and had an even more impressive ruff and a muzzle grizzled with age. Trotting along behind it were two smaller wolves that Dean thought looked a lot like some of his visitors from earlier. He couldn’t be sure, though; the only wolf he would have recognized on sight was Sam. The older wolf didn’t bother with the prudent distance the other two kept, it walked right up until Dean could have reached out and touched it and then sat gracefully. Dean had no doubt at all that _this_ was a member of Sam’s pack, the intelligence and _wisdom_ in the amber eyes that calmly met his own was almost a palpable thing.  
  
“I’m looking for Sam,” Dean whispered.  
  
The wolf stood and took Dean’s jacket cuff in his mouth; it tugged until the hunter stood up and then let go. The animal took a few steps, them glanced meaningfully over its shoulder until Dean followed, the two smaller ones trailing along at the end of the strange procession. It wasn’t long before Dean realized he was being led to his cabin. He thought about stopping and going back, but the wolf seemed to sense his indecision and gave Dean a look that let him know he would have no hesitation to tackle an unruly human. They stopped at the edge of the woods and three sets of amber eyes watched as Dean kept walking towards the porch. He spun as a sudden crashing sounded behind him, coming closer through the forest. In seconds, he could make out the form of a wolf running all out and careless of the racket it was making. The wolf that had led Dean to the cabin suddenly snarled, causing the new arrival to divert around the group and then swing around the stand in front of Dean, facing back at the other wolves. It was Sam, hackles raised and teeth bared.  
  
“Sam--” Dean started to tell him it was alright but the older wolf shifted his gaze to Dean and barked. It was about the clearest ‘shut- up’ Dean had ever gotten and he closed his mouth. The posturing went on for a few minutes, growls and shiftings of body that Dean knew was conveying worlds more information that he would ever be able to understand. Finally, Sam gave a capitulation sort of whine and walked towards the older wolf. His head was lowered and he licked at the grizzled muzzle in what Dean recognized as a gesture of submission and... apology? A moment later, the elder and the two others walked off into the forest and Sam headed back to Dean.  
  
Dean crouched down in the yard and threw his arms around the furry body. “Where did you go?”  
  
Sam just leaned into him and gave a tentative lick across his chin. Dean didn’t even flinch back from the tongue on his face like he usually did, just pulled Sam closer until he could bury his face in the coarse fur, grateful the wolf was okay.  
  
Dean knew Sam was apologetic over how worried Dean had been at his disappearance -- the wolf stood practically on his feet for three days, leaning and trailing so close Dean could feel warm breath on the backs of his legs. But on the fourth day instead of trying to merge with Dean’s space, he was out in the yard, standing oddly still until Dean finally went out to see if there was a problem. Sam watched, and when Dean was right in front of him, the wolf whuffed and then started off into the woods. Dean, puzzled, started to follow and Sam walked patiently back and nudged Dean until he was standing back in the same place, then Sam whuffed again and headed away. Dean watched, bemused, until the wolf had vanished into the forest, and then looked around, realizing he stood in almost the exact same place he had knelt to greet Sam’s return after the days he was missing. Dean had a foreboding feeling he knew what the elaborate placement had been about and wasn’t surprised when it was another two days that Sam was gone. He came back for a week, then was gone for four days. Then an entire week.  
  
Dean waited, frustrated, for Sam to come back. Without the wolf’s company and companionship, he was finding that fewer and fewer things around the cabin were holding his attention. He was spending even more time in town pouring over newspapers and Internet, and the number of things he was finding that needed to be investigated was staggering. Realizing he was starting to feel that _itch_ he always felt between jobs, that need to find the next hunt, the next horizon, Dean made a point of reconnecting with Alan, hoping that maybe developing some kind of social life would help him develop some interest in the community. But ultimately he was just reminded again of how much he didn’t fit in. He didn’t belong in a town, thinking about getting a nine-to-five and wondering if he should go ahead and redo the weatherproofing on the fence or if it could go another season. He needed to be out there helping people, but he _couldn’t_ leave Sam. He wouldn’t. Even if sometimes Dean was starting to feel that Sam was leaving him.  
  
When the full moon came, Sam had been gone more than a week and a half, and Dean wasn’t even sure he would come back to spend the nights he was human at the cabin anymore. His skin crawled for Sam’s touch; it felt like there was something _missing_ with the wolf gone.  
  
But Sam did come back, an hour after sunset, blowing in the door like a storm and wrapping Dean up in his frantic energy, and for a few days, it was like the strain and the absences were a dream.  
  
But then the three days were up, and Sam vanished again.  
  
For two weeks.  
  
Dean started spending time dragging out his hunting gear and just generally checking it over, seeing what he was low on, cleaning and maintenance. Things he had been neglecting for far too long. Just... in case. There was no point in letting things get worn down just because he wasn’t _currently_ using them.  
  
When Sam returned, Dean tried to talk to him again, asking where he was going, insisting that if Sam _had_ to go, at least he could take Dean with him. He told Sam about being worried about him, and his concern about what was going on and that maybe Sam needed help. The wolf paid him very serious attention while he spoke, but when Dean was done talking, all Sam did was try to lick him and rubbed against him like a cat, and then he was off again into the forest. Dean, who had never had a relationship that lasted more than two months in his life, tried to counsel himself to patience, tried to convince himself that they had had a great seven months and whatever was going on would blow over.  
  
But when June rolled around, Sam had been gone more than a month and Dean had had enough.  
  
He went into town to talk to the trust manager for the cabin, letting him know it would need to be checked on, since Dean would be gone. He talked to Alan and the ladies at the library he had befriended, thanking them for their help and company and wishing them well. He stopped by to hug Lynnette and give her the recipe he had used for his pie. She laughed and told him he needed to use more sugar, and he promised to remember for the next batch. And then Dean went back home and packed the Impala. With every trip he made reloading the trunk, he scanned the woods, hoping to see movement, but knowing he wouldn’t.  
  
It felt like it destroyed something in his heart to drive out of the valley as the sun set on the forty- second day of Sam’s disappearance. But it would have hurt more to stay, knowing Sam was out there having some kind of life while Dean waiting at home for him, never knowing if the wolf would actually come back. He repeated that to himself as he snaked his way through the mountains on ribbons of asphalt that spilled out onto the plains. He coached himself on the importance of his job and the people whose lives he could save while he chose roads that would take him East and South, as far away from Montana and the late Spring chill as he could get. And when he was crossing out of Kansas wondering if a wolf could track the Impala down the open highways across the country, he put his foot down on the gas and tried to outrun the last year of his life and the sinking feeling that he had finally suffered a wound he would never recover from.

  
  
**Chapter Thirteen**

"The wolf is neither man's competitor nor his enemy.  
He is a fellow creature with whom the earth must be shared."  
~L. David Mech

  
**_Two Years Later..._**  
The apartment wasn’t even a quarter of the size the cabin had been, but it came furnished with a twin bed, a half-stove and a shower, and that was all he needed. Dean did his usual precautions for when he planned to stay at a place more than a day or two -- salt, static charms, those types of things. After that, he took a stroll around the neighborhood, making himself familiar with the immediate area, good ambush points, facilities and sight lines. Unlike his last visit to the valley, this trip had a specific purpose, and he wasn’t going to accomplish it hanging out in a one-room hole.  
  
It had been twenty four months since he had left Sunvalley. Two years of hard hunts and long, empty nights. He had tried to scour the wolf from his heart and mind -- with distance, bloodshed and the company of willing women, and not a few men. But there was no amount of space that could separate him from his own memories, and the bloodshed served no purpose but to remind him in hard fact of how unfair the world was. And no matter how hot the person, or how great his need, he found no satisfaction in their company. It only took a few apologetic, mumbled excuses of too much alcohol or exhaustion to make him shy from taking people back to his motel room. Every few months, he would try again, until it became obvious that whatever the problem was, it wasn’t going away. He dreamed of Sam constantly. Daydreams and real dreams, when he woke up in the night and his belly was sticky with semen, it was Sam’s name on his lips. Dean _hated_ that he couldn’t escape this ghost, and he finally decided that the only way to lay it to rest was to return to the scene of the crime. Sort of. The idea of going back to stay at the cabin had made him actually nauseous, so he moved into the cheapest apartment he could find in town.  
  
Dean wasn’t sure what he needed to do to make enough peace with his past that he could move on, and so he walked the streets of a town he’d rarely visited outside of one or two specific places even when he lived there, restless and angry, and found nothing that made him feel any closer to resolution.

~~~~~~~

“Got any more bright ideas, Bobby?”  
  
Bobby snorted. “This was your bright idea. I suggested you find someone else to hang your heart on if the damn wolf was still troubling you, and instead, you slept with a dozen barflies, called me up drunk to whine about it, and then insisted that what you needed to get over the wolf was to go back to where he lived.”  
  
“Well,” Dean was hardly mollified, “I didn’t see you stopping me.”  
  
“Was there a point to this call?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“Just looking for more advice.”  
  
Dean could hear Bobby rolling his eyes from states away. “You know when I said you could call me anytime? I meant for _hunting_ related things, Dean. Not the train-wreck of your love life.”  
  
“He’s a werewolf.”  
  
“Which you damn well knew when you leaped into this mess. And besides, were you going to try and kill him?” Bobby asked pointedly.  
  
There was a long silence.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“I’m thinking.”  
  
“ _Dean._ ”  
  
“I just want to move on! I don’t want this over me anymore when I’m sizing some chick up in a bar. I want... I don’t want to feel like this! ”  
  
Bobby sighed. “The heart’s not like an engine, kid. You can’t clean this and change that, give it a good kick and expect it to run like you want. He got in good under your skin; it’s going to take some time.”  
  
“It’s been two years,” Dean hissed.  
  
“And it might be two more! What do you want from me?”  
  
Dean sighed with frustration.  
  
Bobby gentled his tone. “Look, you’re there anyways. If you won’t stay at the cabin, then maybe you can find something local that reminds you of him. Get involved; see if you can work out some of your demons. There aren’t any quick fixes.”  
  
“Frankly, Bobby, I’m not sure there are any fixes at all.”

~~~~~~~

“We’re always happy to have new members! ”  
  
Dean gave the too-friendly girl sitting behind the battered card table with a sticker on her shirt that said ‘Missy’ a reflexive smile. “I don’t know how long I’ll be in town.”  
  
“Oh, that’s no problem,” she beamed. “You can stop by when you’re in the area. We do a couple of big events a year; guest lecturers, mostly. Every other weekend, we do a nature walk to help people get interested in what kind of plants and animals we have right here in the valley, then of course we have the twice-a-week meeting here, after classes finish up. Nothing really formal; usually someone will do a twenty-minute presentation on something and then we talk about it and have some kind of snack.”  
  
“I like snacks. What about dues?”  
  
“Twenty-five dollars a year. If you have it,” she added hastily, taking in his battered clothes. “And you can pay in installments. Five here, ten there. Plus, you need to bring the food once or twice. We have a schedule.” She rummaged through some papers.  
  
“Do I have to talk?”  
  
“Not if you don’t want to,” she assured him. “We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at eight p.m., so you won’t get to meet the rest of the gang until next week. We also meet Saturdays during the summer but that won’t start up until June. Are you a student here?”  
  
“Do I have to be?”  
  
“Oh, no; not at all. We just don’t get a lot of people who aren’t students unless they are affiliated with one of our community outreach groups. Just curious.”  
  
“I’m not a student.” Dean flipped through one of the black and white brochures. “Just an interested resident. You guys do a lot about wolves?”  
  
“The local wolf population is one of the most interesting things we have here in the valley. As far as people have been able to survey, they form unique pack arrangements and have unusual behavioral patterns.”  
  
“And spawn a lot of unusual rumors.”  
  
Missy grinned. “People like to tell stories, and who doesn’t like to tell stories about wolves? The truth is that most of our information about the local packs is anecdotal or accidental. They seem to have an uncanny ability to avoid even the most professional attempts to tag or track them. From the voices you can hear most nights, the population is unusually dense for the area, even if they are ranging over the mountains and into the surrounding forests and valley. But there doesn’t seem to be the corresponding decrease in the local prey animals you would expect if...” She caught Dean’s raised eyebrow and flushed. “Sorry, I’m kind of a wolf buff. I can just go on and on. Are you interested in them?”  
  
Dean set the brochure back down on the table. “No. Not anymore.”

~~~~~~~

Dean took the opportunity of his empty hours to visit with Alan and some of the other friends he had made during the year and a half he had lived in the valley. They were pleased enough to see him, but a two-year absence was a long time to touch base with people he had barely known to begin with, and he could hardly explain to them where he had gone, or why. But they were good for the distraction of some drinks and a few friendly games of pool in the evenings. He had learned to spend as little of the evenings alone as possible. It was the first place Dean had lived where he was actually grateful for the racket of his neighbors on four sides. Two of them didn’t seem to sleep, and that suited Dean fine. He didn’t want to be alone with his misery, and even anonymous strangers were better than the silence of four walls.  
  
He also spent a lot of time making the re-acquaintance of his favorite library in the world. Dean had an entire file in the Impala’s trunk on things to look into when he had time, and whatever the collection was lacking in material, it made up for with the speed of its Internet connection and unlimited coffee and cookies.  
  
The wildlife group wasn’t as much of a boring waste of time as Dean had anticipated. If nothing else, it was full of giggling co-eds who were very earnest both about their desire to save the world and their appreciation of Dean. At least a few indicated they would be happy to appreciate Dean on a more personal level, but he knew that was going nowhere so he turned them down with nothing more than a little harmless flirtation.  
  
The first meeting was awkward because he felt out of place, but the people were friendly and the discussion was about tracking, something he found professionally interesting and drew him in despite himself.  
  
The second meeting was a less interesting topic, but he felt more comfortable with the people and found himself actually anticipating the next Tuesday when the group would meet again. It was a break from the monotony of his research and wandering routine.  
  
The parking lot was unusually full when he got to the community college that night. He shouldered his way through some of the crowd until he found a familiar face.  
  
“Missy -- what are all of these people doing here?”  
  
“Hey, Dean! Tonight is one of our guest lecturer nights. Dr. Kimmel comes out once a year to talk about stewardship and conservation efforts in Canada and how things have changed with some of their park programs. He’s really very funny. I think half the town shows up for this.”  
  
“Yeah, looks like. How often is it this packed? ”  
  
“We do three of four like this a year; Dr. Kimmel’s is the most popular, though.” She grinned and looped an arm through his, steering him towards the lecture hall across from the small classroom they usually met in.  
  
“Oh, hey, Dave!” She let go of Dean and waved across the hall, bouncing on her toes trying to get someone, presumably the mentioned ‘Dave’s’ attention. No one looked towards her and she gave Dean a hopeful look. “Save me a seat?”  
  
“Sure,” he replied, bemused, watching her thread her way into the crowd and disappear.  
  
Truthfully, Dean wasn’t certain about staying. He liked the group because it was casual and laid back; more of a conversation than any kind of lecture. A more formal sit-down with theater seating and some blowhard wasn’t nearly as appealing. But a quick survey of the crowd told him it would be more hassle than it was probably worth to elbow his way back out, and there must be _some_ reason the entire town seemed excited about the guy. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything else planned.  
  
The lecture hall itself was only about half full, which explained all of the people in the lobby and hallway standing around chatting. He checked his watch and figured they must have moved the start time back a bit, since this was a bigger event. There were still some good seats up front and he was making his way there when his attention was caught by a couple of people in one of the short rows to the side. He figured they were students, from the casual dress and the backpacks crammed in around their feet, but something about them kept nagging at him as he walked closer on his way to seats he’d been eyeing, and he slowed down to take a closer look.  
  
Nothing was immediately out of place; he could only see the back and side of them from his angle. Four girls and three guys, t-shirts, sundresses, sweater jackets, obviously taking advantage of the unseasonal warmth and thaw. They would regret that when they left after the program, but that wasn’t what was bothering him. The girl on the end had her blonde hair piled high in a clip and he appreciated the curve of her neck and the low cut of her dress abstractedly as he moved to where he could see their faces, but she wasn’t who he was suddenly interested in. Sitting one seat in to her left was a man who seemed... oddly familiar. His brown hair was cut just under his ears, and Dean could see the ragged threads of the hemp necklace he wore resting just above the worn edge of his shirt. He stepped around the end of the aisle and stopped dead.  
  
The only thought that came to Dean’s mind was _he looks good_. As he watched Sam smile and point at something on the stage and then lean in close to the blonde’s ear to whisper something that made her snicker, there was a white, staticky noise in his ears. The guy on Sam’s other side smacked his arm to get his attention, then passed him a notepad. Sam wrote something on it then handed it to the blonde; she added her own something to it and the whole thing was passed back down the line with much laughter. Just a group of college kids, having fun together while waiting for the program to start. They probably sat that way in their classes, and out on the town. Friends. _Or_ , Dean thought distantly, as the blonde leaned into Sam, twisting herself so that she could press her chest into his arm, _something more_.  
  
People jostled him as they brushed by him on both sides, and the students talked among themselves, still oblivious to his presence.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Dean turned his head, still feeling a great falsity of calmness, to find Missy back at his side.  
  
“Did you want to sit up front? We should go grab the seats if you do.”  
  
Dean just turned back to look at Sam again. Missy followed his gaze. “That’s some of the people from Mike Harkin’s zoology class. The lab meets ridiculously late, so they don’t get to come to regular meetings. Unless they skip,” she grinned. “But Mike knows to check the meeting when they don’t show up, so that doesn’t happen too often. Do you know them?”  
  
“Him,” Dean mumbled.  
  
“Him? Which him?” She craned her neck. “You mean Sam? The cutie closest to the end? ”  
  
“You know him?”  
  
“Sure. Everyone knows Sam. Hey -- are you guys related? I meant to ask you last week; it’s just that your last name is kind of unusual and it stood out a bit.”  
  
“Last name?” Dean felt like an idiot, but his brain honestly didn’t seem to be working.  
  
“Winchester. Sam Winchester.” She eyed him. “You don’t sound good; are you okay? ”  
  
Before Dean could even _try_ to answer that, Sam suddenly frowned and broke off from whatever he had been saying. He tilted his head back like he was sniffing the air and looked around. It was such a _Sam_ thing that Dean, who thought he was past feeling anything but anger and betrayal, felt a surge of loss that sliced through him worse than any knife wound he’d ever taken. Those hazel eyes turned to him unerringly and Dean met them head on, able to see when all of the color drained from Sam’s face and he shot to his feet.  
  
“Dean!” The shout seemed to echo off the hall walls. It certainly echoed in Dean’s head. The conversation fell silent around them and Sam struggled to get past the knees and backpacks in his way.  
  
The possibility of having to get through a meeting with Sam in the middle of a crowd of people, or _at all_ , was too much. Dean turned on his foot and fled, shouldering his way through the mingling crowd with muttered apologies and not slowing his pace until he was safely in the Impala and able to vanish into the dark, anonymous streets.  
  
Back at his crappy apartment, he cursed to himself and stuffed things into his duffle bag. A lifetime as a nomad ensured it wasn’t that big of a chore but he didn’t usually have to manage when his hands were shaking and his heart pounding in... what? Anger, misery, guilt? Rage? It was a tumult of all sorts of emotions, and fortunately for his sanity, he had no need to sort them out.  
  
This was all Sam’s fault; Dean had never had these kinds of problems before the wolf entered his life. Coming back had been a mistake. Sam was... well, he didn’t know what was going on with the shifter. But it wasn’t the full moon, so among other things, he could apparently shift _any damn time he wanted_. All those months they had spent as lovers, the time they could have had together as people, the loneliness Dean had felt, was all for nothing. Sam had lied to him from day one. Fuck him.  
  
Dean shouldered the bag and stormed out. The apartment was month-to-month, and the month had been paid for. There was two weeks left; he would just mail them the damn key.  
  
The parking lot was dark. There were two lights, but one was fritzing on and off, and the other was by the manager’s office. Neither of them anywhere near where Dean had been forced to leave the Impala, but it wasn’t so dark that Dean could miss the tall figure leaning against his car. He almost turned and went back inside, but then he would be boxed in with the knowledge that Sam was just outside the door, waiting, while Dean cowered away. He swore under his breath and forced himself to pick up the pace. All he had to do was ignore him and get in the car. Then he could get the hell out of the freaking valley and never come back. Sam could screw himself.  
  
“Dean.”  
  
Dean grunted and pulled his keys from his pocket; he couldn’t help the brief glance but refused to give the wolf more than that. Sam looked good, though; long limbs clad in worn jeans and a t-shirt that clung to his muscles in all the right places. Dean had known he would look this good, but it had been such a wrestling match just to get Sam to wear clothes _period_ , and never anything Dean hadn’t worn for a few hours first. The idea of getting him into jeans had given Dean such a headache just thinking it, he had never seriously considered trying it. And now here was Sam, as comfortable in his clothes as any other person would be. It was too dark to clearly see his face, but the set of his shoulders and jaw and the tension in his crossed arms told Dean he was also unhappy, and defensive. Good.  
  
Dean turned the key rougher than he intended and popped the trunk. He slid his bag off his shoulder and then slammed the metal back down, too angry to take the care he normally did. Sam was still leaning against the driver’s side door.  
  
“Move.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Get the fuck out of my way,” Dean ordered harshly.  
  
“No,” Sam growled. “We need to talk.” He pushed off the car and took a step towards Dean.  
  
The gun was out and pointed before Dean even thought about it. Sam froze mid-step.  
  
Dean was proud his hand didn’t shake even a little. He certainly felt like he was vibrating, jangling with clashing emotions demanding a dozen different actions. In the same instant, he could see himself both pinning Sam against the Impala, molding his own body up against all that heat and muscle, and pulling the trigger and resolving everything permanently. He was frozen in indecision, on the edge of all actions, when the choice was made for him.  
  
Sam darted in with inhuman speed and grace; he shoved the gun aside and grabbed Dean’s shoulder, pulling him in so close that Dean could feel the heat of his breath on the side of his face when Sam hissed in his ear, “You know where to find me.”  
  
Then Dean was falling, shoved hard so he landed on his ass as the Impala’s keys were ripped from his hand. He scrambled back up, gun first, but Sam was already gone into the night.

~~~~~~~

“He took my fucking keys, Bobby!”  
  
“You forget how to hotwire a car? You left a spare set of keys here. Get her started and come pick them up. Then you can go sulk somewhere else.”  
  
“That’s not--! I’m not _sulking_. _He_ left _me_. This wasn’t my fucking fault; all I wanted was to get over the entire mess. And I’d also like to point out our entire fucking relationship was a _lie_. I know where he is all right, but there is no way in _hell_ I’m going to the cabin.”  
  
“Dean...”  
  
“He can obviously shift whenever the hell he wants, and he fits in great with his college buddies, no social issues there. You should have seen the way he was all cozy with that blonde. I don’t know what the fuck he wanted with me, but I’m done. Completely. Fucking. Done.”  
  
“Except you need your keys.”  
  
“YES!”  
  
“Why again?”  
  
Dean hesitated. “I just do. The key to dad’s storage place out in Topeka was on the ring. It’s a bitch to replace.”  
  
“More of a bitch than hiking god-knows-where in the dead of the night in the mountains of Montana to confront a shapeshifter you would prefer never to see again?”  
  
“There might have been a few more keys on that ring too.”  
  
“What keys?” Bobby questioned ominously.  
  
“Bobby...”  
  
“Would the _irreplaceable spelled keys_ to my one-of-a-kind _spelled locks_ be on that ring? The keys you _swore_ you would chain around your neck and never take off? Those keys, by any chance, Dean?”  
  
“I’m walking, Bobby. Listen, I’m walking _right now_.”  
  
“You’d better be freaking _running_. I don’t care if what’s waiting at that cabin with your ex-boyfriend are half a dozen poltergeists and a _yeti_. Get my damn keys back!”  
  
Dean flipped the phone shut and walked faster. If nothing else, the exercise would keep him warm.

~~~~~~~

Three hours later, Dean was standing in the weed-choked yard of a place he had never wanted to see again. The night was cool enough for a fire, but no smoke rose from the chimney. He could see through the blinds that there was a light on in the living room, but nothing else about the interior. The grass was trying to take over the gravel driveway and a few fence rails were down, but for a place that he had abandoned two years earlier, it looked good. The trust made funds available to him for home repair, but the conservator had never shown any inclination to maintain the property himself. Which was fine with Dean, lazy people were less inclined to bother him, and he had never intended to come back.  
  
But while he had abandoned it, he wasn’t at all sure it had been abandoned, in fact.  
  
He climbed the steps slowly. The long, cold hike had burned away most of the heat of his rage, and he was stooped with exhaustion. He should have hotwired the Impala and driven out to the cabin, but he’s been so messed up after his encounter with Sam that he couldn’t think of anything but getting his fucking keys back.  
  
Yeah, he knew exactly where to find the wolf. Damn them both.  
  
Standing in front of the door made him clench his hands into fists as he realized he would have to knock to enter his own damn place, so it was more of a threatening pound when he finally made himself do it.  
  
There was no sound of footsteps to give away any movement from inside, but after a moment, the door swung open and Sam was there. He stepped back in silent invitation, as Dean had done for him so many times, back when the cabin was his refuge and Sam just the wolf that kept him company, before sex or the supernatural had any part of their relationship.  
  
“Give me the keys.”  
  
“Leave the gun on the porch and come inside.” Clear, perfect English.  
  
“I don’t need to come inside, I just need the keys. I don’t care if you want to use the freaking cabin, but I’m cold and I’m tired and... fuck you, Sam. I didn’t do a goddamned thing to you that you didn’t start first. We’ve had our own lives now for two years; I just want the keys so I can go. What the fuck is so hard about that?”  
  
Something darkened in the hazel eyes, but Sam’s voice stayed level and calm. “We need to talk; I don’t want the gun involved. Leave it out there; no one else is going to come around. You give me ten minutes and then you can have the keys, the cabin, and anything else you want.”  
  
‘ _You?_ ’ was on the tip of Dean’s tongue to ask, but he bit it back, furious at the impulse, and took refuge in the anger that had kept him walking though the dark cold. “How about I keep my gun and you give me the damn keys anyway? ”  
  
Sam smiled thinly. “I’m not talking to you while you’re armed, and talking is the only way you get them from me.” He must have seen the idea cross Dean’s face, because after a moment, his eyes narrowed and he added, “Shooting me won’t help you; I hid them.”  
  
Dean scowled and laid the gun on the porch. Sam backed into the cabin and Dean followed, trying not to show his relief to be out of the biting weather. The inside was much as he remembered: the same furniture, the same appliances. A pile of what looked like textbooks on the table beside the couch and a thick, fuzzy rug of some sort big enough to cover the area in front of the television and fireplace were the only real differences.  
  
“Relative of yours?” Dean asked, nodding towards the floor.  
  
Sam ignored him. “I missed you.”  
  
“ _You_ left _me_ ,” Dean snarled. “You don’t get to hold me hostage here now so you can tell me how much you _fucking missed me_.”  
  
“I thought you would wait.”  
  
Dean just gaped for a minute. “I did wait, Sam. I waited for a few days, and then I waited for you for a few weeks. And I kept waiting until you were gone an _entire month_. Remember that? Or were you too busy boning some chick in exchange for fucking language lessons. Congratulations, you have ‘prick’ down great.”  
  
“I didn’t have a choice! I didn’t want to go!”  
  
“Of course you had a choice! Who the hell’s choice do you think it was?! I _loved_ you. I would have given up everything to stay with you, be with you, and you fucking _walked away_. Give me my goddamned keys. I don’t have to stand here and listen to this. If you had something to say to me, you should have said it two years ago.”  
  
“I _couldn’t_ say it two years ago,” Sam growled. “I did the best I could; I thought you understood!”  
  
“The only thing I understood was that you walked out on me. Screw you, Sam. Give me the fucking keys.”  
  
Sam’s expression was pure frustration. Dean could have sympathized with it if he felt like sympathizing with Sam at all. But he wanted his keys and he wanted far away from him.  
  
“Come and get them.”  
  
“What?!”  
  
“The keys, they’re in my pocket. Come and get them,” Sam taunted.  
  
Dean ground his teeth. “Great hiding place. You said if I talked to you, I could have them; we talked.”  
  
“I didn’t say _how_ you could have them.” Sam spread his arms wide. Dean had been deliberately avoiding looking at anything but his face, but the bulge in Sam’s pocket was obvious. It wasn’t the only obvious bulge, and Dean felt his own body take a sharp interest despite himself. Sam had always called to the most basic parts of him, and Dean ground his teeth to be reminded of it now.  
  
He saw Sam’s nostrils flare and a tight smile curve his lips. The werewolf could smell his response; fucking wonderful.  
  
“I’m not going to stick my hand in your pocket!”  
  
“Then I guess you don’t want them that badly. Feel free to stay the night; it’s your house, after all. I’ll stay with my family; we can talk again tomorrow night.”  
  
“You aren’t leaving this house until I have those keys!”  
  
“I already told you how to get them.”  
  
Dean took an angry step forward, not so much to get the keys as to wipe the smirk off of Sam’s face. His fists were balled so tightly, his short nails were digging into his skin, and fury had his heartbeat pounding in his ears.  
  
After a moment, Sam shrugged and let his arms drop back to his sides.  
  
“See you tomorrow then.” The werewolf pulled on a flannel shirt from the back of the chair and bent to retie a lace.  
  
“Sam, I am fucking warning you...”  
  
Like in a flashback to the early days of their relationship, the werewolf showed no signs of having heard him. He ignored Dean as if he wasn’t even standing there and reached for the front door.  
  
Dean lost it.

~~~~~~~

Dean had done smarter things in his life than throw himself bodily at a full-grown werewolf and attempt to beat the shit out of him by hand, but if Sam wanted Dean to communicate with him, then he could fucking take what he had coming. Dean might trip over his own tongue sometimes, but he was fluent in bodily harm.  
  
It didn’t quite go as expected. Dean had a lot of anger and pent up fury to pound into Sam, but the dreams that had haunted him for two years were the result of a different sort of deep-seated need. Sometime after the two of them landed on the end table and shattered it into kindling, the tumultuous free-for-all changed from an attempt to carve their frustrations out of each other’s flesh and into something just as frantic, but more cooperative.  
  
Cloth ripped under supernatural strength as Sam tried to find Dean’s skin under layers of fabric, and Dean raked his own nails across any part of Sam he could grab, twisting them both over so he had the shifter pinned under him. He bit hard on the muscle where Sam’s neck and shoulder met when the wolf struggled to regain ground and Sam shuddered beneath him, stilling in place. Dean drew a deep lungful of the clean, wild scent of him, then pulled back to see his face. Sam leaned up and licked desperately across his lips, the gesture an echo of his lupine form, odd in his human flesh. Dean pushed hard on his shoulder to pin him down and then rolled off, shaken. It was too easy. _This_ was too easy. He pushed to his feet and started for the door. He needed the cold air and some distance to clear his head.  
  
From the corner of his eye, Dean could see the keys half beneath the couch from where they had spilled from Sam’s pocket during the struggle. He made no move to grab them; if he didn’t get out, he was in danger of not leaving at all. His fingers brushed the door handle just as a heavy weight hit him behind the knees and he went down in a tangle of limbs.  
  
“No!” Sam hissed fiercely in his ear. “No, you aren’t leaving me again. You _can’t_ ; don’t you understand?! ”  
  
“Let me go!” Dean fought hard to win free, but as before when they had fought -- what the wolf lacked in skill, he made up for in persistence and desperation. Sam had his arms wrapped over Dean’s own and was clinging like he needed Dean to breath. _Dean_ needed to breathe, and he let some of the tension seep out of his body to relax into the heat of Sam’s. “Sam...”  
  
“Stay,” Sam mumbled into Dean’s throat, face buried in the collar of his shirt and breath heavy and heated through the fabric. Dean could feel the echo of Sam’s heartbeat in his own flesh. The werewolf was shaking, wiggling like he wanted to crawl inside Dean’s skin with him. Sam shifted around until his arms could slip under Dean’s, and he curled so his head was tucked under Dean’s chin.  
  
With the faint ticking of the ancient clock on the mantle and the soft rustle of the cool air through the trees outside, Dean could almost believe the two years of anger and separation had never happened. The raw beams of the roof overhead and the warm weight in his arms were as familiar to him as if he had spent every one of those nights just like this.  
  
“Who’s decision was it, Sam?” Dean whispered down into the soft hair. He didn’t think he would get an answer, but he wanted one, desperately. He wanted Sam to have an answer that would make things if not okay, then at least something he could understand. Some reason that would make lying wrapped in Sam’s arms anything but a fool’s mistake.  
  
Sam tilted his head back so Dean could see the glitter of his eyes. “It wasn’t... it wasn’t what you think. I _don’t_ know what you think, but it wasn’t... It was for us. So we could be together. I didn’t leave you; I _would never_ leave you. But you went away. I couldn’t find your track, couldn’t follow where you went.” He rubbed the side of his face against Dean’s chest. “Stay with me.”  
  
Dean swallowed, fighting to say anything but yes. Sam had always made him stupid. “That’s not an answer.”  
  
“Stay with me tonight. Tomorrow, when the sun sets, I’ll tell you everything.”  
  
“Tell me now.”  
  
“No.” Sam untangled himself and stood up. He held one hand out to Dean, eyes very dark and something fragile in his expression.  
  
Part of Dean wanted to ignore the hand and leave, to walk away from the promise of more heartache and the confusion that Sam represented. But the part of him that had never forgotten eyes that rocked him to his soul at the age of ten reached out anyway and grabbed hold.

  
  
**Chapter Fourteen**

Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.  
                                   ~Lord Byron

  
Dean didn’t know what to expect when Sam led him into the dark coolness of the bedroom. The only light was that spilling down the hall as he stood just in the doorway, waiting to see what Sam had in mind. Nothing about the evening was turning out like he had expected. All Dean had been planning was a low-key visit with some wildlife enthusiasts and then an early bedtime. Now he stood heart-sick and mostly blind in a cabin he had abandoned more than two years ago, sharing breath with a man he’d never wanted to see again.  
  
Sam’s hands pushed his jacket from his shoulders; Dean let it fall to the floor, then felt Sam’s fingers at the front of his flannel, tugging lightly at the buttons as he worked them open. When the flannel was pooled on top of the jacket, Sam’s hands landed lightly at Dean’s waist, slipping under the edge of the t-shirt to pull it smoothly up. Dean helped, raising his arms for the fabric to slip over until he stood bare to the waist.  
  
When Sam’s fingers brushed the rough cotton of his jeans, Dean stepped back, working the worn denim open himself and skinning out of the rest of his clothes. There was a faint creak of bedsprings, and when Dean sank down onto the mattress beside Sam, he wasn’t surprised to feel bare skin touching his own as he pressed the length of his body against Sam’s heated flesh.  
  
The coolness of the room was shut out by the heavy comforter thrown over them as Dean found Sam’s face by touch and pressed their lips together. Sam opened his mouth under the pressure and Dean licked in, tangling their tongues as he twined the fingers of one hand into Sam’s hair to hold his head at just the right angle. It had been two years since Dean had found any kind of pleasure that involved more than his right hand and imagination. Having Sam wrapped around him again was like being delivered. The intensity of the moment pushed all thoughts of conflict and uncertainly from his mind. He drowned his senses in the familiarity of the body he was exploring as he sought out all the little places he remembered where Sam was especially appreciative of... attention.  
  
Sam moved against him, the soft gasps and low, wordless sounds a comfortable counterpoint to the taste of his skin as Dean mouthed his way low across Sam’s belly to the rigid shaft of his cock. He ignored it, sucking lightly at the tightly drawn up sac until the sounds Sam was making were too desperate to be ignored and he slid back up the fever-hot skin to press another deep kiss to a willing mouth.  
  
Dean slid one hand back down to wrap his fingers around Sam’s erection, slicking precome over his palm and working the shaft with the rough rhythm he knew Sam liked best. Sam shuddered hard and spilled hot over his wrist. Dean bit down on his shoulder and worked his own dick against the sweat-slicked hollow of Sam’s hip.  
  
Afterwards, they lay pressed together, skin drying very slowly in the heated tent the comforter made around them.  
  
“We need something,” Dean finally spoke up. Sam made a sleepy, questioning sort of sound. “To clean with. Before we sleep, or we’ll both be sorry in the morning. And if you still turn furry with the sun, you might be sorrier than me.”  
  
Sam snorted, but rolled over and slid an arm out from under the comforter, letting in a draft of cold air as he fished something off the floor. A moment later, he was clumsily wiping at their skin before tossing the cloth back out and pulling the cover close again. Sam curled his body with Dean’s in a way Dean knew would have him uncomfortably hot and sticky well before dawn, but he couldn’t bring himself to shove Sam away. Not when it might be the last night they would have together. The idea made Dean’s stomach knot with tension and he ruthlessly shoved it away. He could have this night. Sam had promised answers with the next sunset, and Dean didn’t have to deal with anything until then.  
  
“That had better not have been my shirt,” he grumbled, throwing his arm over Sam’s waist and settling in for the night.

~~~~~~~

Dean woke up some time later when Sam gently pulled free of his embrace and slid out of the bed. He watched as Sam left the room silently, pulling the door gently closed behind himself. Beside the bed, a clock blinked the time in insistent red numbers: 6:48. Almost sunrise. Feeling oddly relieved that at least some things in his universe still operated as expected, Dean rolled over and fell back asleep. He didn’t stir at all when about twenty minutes later a heavy weight settled back beside him on the bed and laid a furry jaw over his hip with a satisfied sigh.  
  
Sunlight was edging brightly around the heavy curtains when Dean woke again later in the morning. He found himself nose to nose with a wolf that gave an enthusiastic swipe of wet tongue across Dean’s face before he hopped nimbly off the bed, experience letting him easily avoid the swat Dean aimed at him.  
  
“I thought we had an understanding about that,” Dean growled, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The wolf looked unconcerned, and watched with interest as Dean cursed mildly at the chill and quickly dressed in his scattered clothes. But when Dean grabbed his jacket and sat to pull his boots on, the wolf started growling, a low, discontented sound that Dean ignored. It was harder to ignore when the wolf planted itself between Dean and the door with bared teeth.  
  
“I’m taking these,” Dean jingled the keys he had fished from beneath the couch, “and going to get my car. Then I’m going to turn in my apartment keys, find something for lunch, and come back.”  
  
Sam growled louder. Dean frowned at him.  
  
“I said I would come back and hear you out, but I’m not going to hang out here bored all day watching you shed. If you don’t even trust me to do that, then why the hell do you want to talk to me at all?”  
  
For a moment, Dean thought he was going to have to force his way through the door, but after a long stare, Sam flattened his ears and slunk out of the way.

~~~~~~~

The hike back into town was both better and worse than the previous night’s. It was better because the air wasn’t as cold and he wasn’t stumbling around fuming in the dark, but it was worse because without the preoccupation of his anger... well, it was a fifteen mile hike through a cold, spring morning in Montana.  
  
Dean had no idea what Sam wanted to say to him, he couldn’t imagine anything that would make what the wolf had done okay. But Dean would do what he had promised and hear him out anyway, because there was _something_ between them; last night had underlined that, if nothing else, and it was something that time and distance hadn’t lessened.  
  
Dean had pretty much grown to doubt everything about his relationship with Sam during the two years he fumed on the road. He had examined and doubted every feeling, every memory, every aspect of the year of their relationship, even before sex became a part of it -- but the profound honesty of Sam’s reactions and desperation the previous night -- Dean couldn’t doubt that. So Sam would have his chance to find an explanation that Dean could live with, because otherwise, Dean half felt that he might actually go insane.  
  
The Impala was exactly where he had left her, and then, since the place was still his and there was no rush on time, he dragged his duffle bag back inside and took a long, hot shower to clean up.  
  
When he finished bathing and had done a more careful packing job than the imprudent haste of the previous evening, he took his keys to the office and turned them in. He didn’t need the place; the cabin was his. He and Sam would either come to some understanding, in which case he _had_ a place to stay, or they wouldn’t, and he would be blowing town tonight. Either way, there was no point in hanging on to the apartment.  
  
He lingered over a long lunch at a diner then headed back out. When he got to the cabin, Sam was laying on the front steps, nosing through one of the textbooks Dean had seen in the living room the night before. The wolf jumped up to greet him, and Dean took the opportunity to swipe the book from the porch and examine it.  
  
“Organic Chemistry?” he asked incredulously.  
  
The wolf gave an oddly human shrug.  
  
Dean shook his head and pulled the screen door open, motioning Sam in first. “You know, most people get less weird the longer you know them, not _more_.”

~~~~~~~

Dean flipped idly through the books on the table as he waited through the hours until sunset. Sam had reclaimed his chemistry text and was sprawled out on the floor with it again. Watching him carry it over to the rug demonstrated to Dean why all of the books looked like they had been chewed along the spine. The television was running in the background and the fire Dean had built had chased off any vestige of cold. It should have been a comfortable afternoon, but the coming confrontation kept him almost vibrating with anxiety.  
  
And then, finally, it was sunset and the time for waiting was over.  
  
Sam stood up, shook out his fur, and headed into the bedroom. When he walked out human a few minutes later, dressed again in the same clothes from the night before, Dean had piled the textbooks back up and sat waiting, eyes dark and face set.  
  
“It’s time.”  
  
Sam nodded and sank into the chair by the counter. He licked his lips nervously.  
  
“So... you wear clothes now?” As an opening line, it left a lot to be desired, but of all the hundred questions Dean needed answers to, it was the one staring him in the face.  
  
“Ah, yeah.” Sam picked at the front of his shirt. “Actually, it’s kind of a reflex now. I can take them off if you want,” he added after a thoughtful moment.  
  
From anyone else, it would have been an offer for a lot more than just getting naked, or at the least a distraction technique, but the only thing Dean felt from Sam was nervousness. It was reassuring to see that Sam’s newfound humanity wasn’t a perfect mask. Certainly no one else Dean knew would have thought an offer to strip naked to put a guest at ease was a natural thing to do.  
  
“Keep them on. You promised me answers; start talking.”  
  
“I didn’t leave you,” Sam said immediately.  
  
“You said that last night, but I pretty distinctly remember that you _did_ , so that’s not really helpful. And that’s not even addressing all this other shit: you wear clothes, you speak English, you hang out at school and apparently can be human any freaking night you want!”  
  
Sam was shaking his head before Dean was even through the first sentence. “I kept sneaking back; I tried to tell you -- I thought you understood! But then you were gone, and I _looked_ , but-”  
  
“Sam,” Dean interrupted, “you already said that. _Where_ did you have to go? Why did you have to _sneak_ back to see me? ”  
  
Sam just looked at him for a minute. “You weren’t happy.”  
  
“ _What?_ I was a lot _more_ not happy with you gone, and what the hell are you talking about! Of course I was happy. Why would you think I wasn’t? If someone wasn’t happy, I would have to say it was the guy that left, you know? ”  
  
Sam looked stubborn, and frustrated. “I would have stayed here with you for a thousand moons and never wanted to leave. I liked... being able to touch you. Having sex, but even if you had never let me do that, just _having you here_ , I would have been happy. I was happy before you knew that I was... other. When you thought I was like any other wolf. I just wanted you, and it didn’t really matter how I had you! ”  
  
“Then why did you fucking _leave_ ,” Dean growled. “You think I wanted something else?!”  
  
“I know you wanted something else,” Sam snapped. “You were sad when you came back here, and I was sad for you, but I was happy because you were _back_. But then you started to get better and you smelled... restless. And then the night when we hunted together to defend your pack and we had sex, I thought that was enough, that that was what you needed to _feel_ like I felt! You could be happy too and we could stay in the valley together. But my cousins told me you wouldn’t. They said you would have to go. And then Bobby came and he said the same thing: that you would have to go. And you were mad at him, but not because you didn’t believe him. I could _smell_ that. You started going to the book place and sometimes you looked at things close, but usually you looked at things very far away. And I _tried_ to be better. I tried to learn things so that when you went I could go with you, but they didn’t make sense. Or when they made sense, they didn’t fit in my head right--” The words were pouring out almost faster than Dean could understand.  
  
“Sam, _Sam_ ,” Dean broke in. “You need to slow down and start over. When I came back _when_?”  
  
Sam had his feet on the cushion and was hugging his knees. “When the cabin was broken. When you came back to fix it.”  
  
“You were happy I came back then?” Dean blinked.  
  
“Of course I was; I’d been waiting _forever_.”  
  
“What do you mean you were _waiting_ for me?”  
  
Sam looked surprised. “Of course I was waiting for you. I knew you would come back, or I would have to go to you. But Samuel told me if it was meant to be, you would return, so I waited. We’re, you know, mates. We belong together.”  
  
“Like what Bobby was saying, because we had sex your... people, they mate for life?” Dean tried to understand. Sam was saying a lot of things that needed to be explained, but he could only attack one at a time.  
  
Sam shook his head again. “No. I mean, usually. But not always. My people believe that everyone has a mate out there, someone the world wants them to be with. Everyone wants to find this person, but most don’t. They give up and settle, and once you do, you will never find them. The feeling just... goes away. It doesn’t mean you are unhappy or unsatisfied, and we do usually spend our entire lives at the side of whoever we settle for, but it _is_ settling,” Sam said fiercely.  
  
“I wouldn’t think there are so many of you guys that it’s hard to check everyone out,” Dean said skeptically.  
  
Sam smiled, but it wasn’t happy. “Dean, my people were wolves. The idea that there is a perfect mate out there came from that time. Do you know how many wolves are in the world? And we _aren’t_ wolves anymore. We are almost as much of your kind now. Some of my people find their mates from wolves, some find them from humans, and some find them among our own kind. But that is a lot of checking. Lifetimes worth.”  
  
“So you settle.”  
  
“We settle.”  
  
“But not you?”  
  
Hazel eyes bored into his own. “I didn’t have to; I found my mate when I was only twenty-six seasons old. Don’t you remember? Don’t you feel it now? It’s been eight turns of the seasons since you left again, Dean. I’ve waited _so long..._ ”  
  
The misery in his voice made Dean want to touch him, but what he was saying made Dean’s hair stand on end. He did remember. Oh yes, he definitely did. “In the kitchen, _that’s_ what that was? ”  
  
“I stepped in the trap and they couldn’t stop the bleeding. Samuel was gone away visiting another pack. But your dad was there, and Samuel had told my people he was safe. So they brought me to the cabin, and I found you.” There was an edge of wonder to his voice, even fourteen years later.  
  
“Samuel Trellis? The guys who helped Bobby and my dad learn about hunting?”  
  
“He was one of us.”  
  
Dean snorted. “I hate to tell you this Sam, but he was human. All the time.”  
  
“As are some of my cousins. But there was a time when he ran on four legs.”  
  
“Hang on, you can _choose_? Is that why you can be human and it’s not the full moon tonight? Why the hell didn’t you do this _before_?”  
  
Sam shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not that simple.”  
  
“No,” Dean said darkly, “nothing ever is.”  
  
“Do you know how my people happened? Did Bobby tell you what changed us into... what we are?”  
  
“He didn’t know.” Dean was impatient. “Is it important?”  
  
“It wanted our help to hurt humans; it wanted us to be obedient and cause harm to those who did not harm us. But it wasn’t part of this world, and the humans it wanted to hurt were. Whatever problems we might have had between our species, at least we were both children of the natural order. It was furious, and cursed us to be like the ones we would protect. For generations, my people were maddened, torn between two worlds -- half of one, some of the other, an unnatural melding of kinds and kindred. It was monstrous. But eventually we learned to adapt; we mated and had offspring with real wolves, and sometimes with humans, and we claimed and protected the valley for our own.”  
  
“It?” Dean asked warily.  
  
“You call them demons.”  
  
“You were cursed by a demon?!”  
  
Sam shrugged. “Thousands of years ago. None of my people have seen a demon in living memory. There are _other_ things that try to move into our territory sometimes, but they are no match for us.”  
  
Dean waved a hand and shook his head. “This is all fascinating. But none of it answers my question. You walked out on me -- why?”  
  
“Because you had to leave and I couldn’t go with you!” Sam exploded. “You weren’t happy here; you’re a hunter, you need to defend your pack. You were better, in your head, and you were restless and you needed to go. But I wasn’t ready, and I couldn’t learn from those books. I needed help and that was the price.”  
  
“Leaving me?”  
  
“Testing you,” Sam snapped. “Testing _us_. They didn’t believe me about the bond. They thought it was dangerous, that I was just infatuated. If you were just _any_ human, they would have tried to help us both, even if they didn’t believe the bond, but you lived here; they might have tried because I believed it. But you’re a human hunter. We know what that means. They worried that you would get tired of me and I would be stranded somewhere, or lost, or you would decide I was a monster after all. They were afraid you would tell other hunters and then they would _know_ , and if you had me, you could prove it. There might be war between our people. They said if I was right, if the bond was real, you would wait. Only Bobby and John of your hunters knew. Bobby was an act of drunken confidence, and your father walked in on one of us shifting when he was visiting Samuel and there was no choice but to tell.”  
  
“Who are _they_ ,” Dean demanded, angry.  
  
“My cousins. My family who always walk as human, they have been learning to live like humans and pass as human, and helping other of my kind do it, for centuries. They know how to teach us, and what we need to learn. I learned more in two hours with them than in three weeks on my own. Look at me! Listen! I go to classes at night at the school and they don’t know I’m any different now.”  
  
“You fucking walked away from me!”  
  
“I had to do it!” Sam snarled back. “I did, and if you think about it for even a minute with what I’ve told you, you’ll know it too. Did you really think you were going to stay in Sunvalley for the rest of your life? For me? ”  
  
Dean was silent. Even before Sam’s long days away, he had been doing research, feeling restless. And that was after not even a year. He loved Sam, but _would_ he have stayed? Bobby hadn’t though so, and Sam didn’t seem to think so either. Dean couldn’t decide if that was a lack of faith on Sam’s part, or a profound understanding of Dean’s nature.  
  
“And what would I have done?” Sam continued. “I could have gone with you as a pet or something, but that would only have been useful to you when there was something that actually needed to be pulled down. Not for all the other things you have to do to protect your pack. Samuel used to tell me all about it, about how hard it was to keep people safe when they didn’t even know there was something they had to be safe from. You need a partner! You need me able to _be_ your partner.”  
  
Dean crossed his arms. “Even if you couldn’t tell me that, your cousins could have. I was worried! Worried and mad and upset. For no reason! ” Though knowing Sam had cousins who lived as human answered the question of how the Impala had gotten back after the mess in Redrock.  
  
“I told you, it was a test.”  
  
“And we failed?” Dean demanded.  
  
“We failed their test; you didn’t fail mine. You did come back. I knew you would.” There was bedrock certainly in Sam’s voice.  
  
“I didn’t have a lot of choice,” Dean growled.  
  
“Of course not.” Sam replied like Dean had said something obvious. “We’re supposed to be together. If you hadn’t come now, I would have gone looking for you soon. The last of my classes finish up next week. I was already working out bus routes. I’ve made some money working on campus, monitoring labs at night.”  
  
Dean blinked. “Where would you have gone? ”  
  
Sam walked over to the old wooden chest and pulled out one of the newer albums in it. He tugged a photo out of its mounting and handed it to Dean silently.  
  
It was a picture of Bobby’s house, before the junkyard had piled up around it. Instead of rusting cars and the debris of the business, overgrown grass and distant trees filled the background. Actual landscaping was still evident, even if obviously not recently cared for, and none of the security measures Dean knew were in place showed in the photo. Bobby himself was sitting on the porch, holding up a bottle of what was probably beer as if in offering. He looked at least twenty years younger. Dean flipped the photo over; on the back, written in a firm print Dean immediately recognized, was the address and an order for Samuel Trellis to come visit.  
  
“Why not just call him? Surely your cousins could show you how to do that?”  
  
“I stayed away from you, and so they had to do what they said and help me pass as human. But they won’t do anything to help me otherwise; they still think I’m crazy. But I can get a phone number for a known address.” Sam took the picture back and slipped it into the album again. “I just thought Bobby would be like them, not hating me, but hated that we were together. But I didn’t think he could blow me off as easily if I was actually at his house.”  
  
Dean had to grudgingly agree it was a better plan. Sam set the album precariously on the pile of text books, then sat cross-legged on the wooden floor at Dean’s feet.  
  
“My family doesn’t hate you, and they aren’t bad people. They are worried that I’m going to get hurt. Your dad worried about you too. Why do you think you never came back here after that night?”  
  
“How would my dad know anything about this? ”  
  
“My uncle was there; he recognized what had happened. He told your dad; I think he wanted John to bring you by _more_ often. He wanted us to grow up together and understand each other’s worlds. But your dad was spooked; he took you away and never brought you with him again to the valley. My uncle believed in our bond, but he died before you returned. Samuel said something to me once like that John didn’t want you involved with anything supernatural that you weren’t going to try and kill. He tried to tell me why, but I was young and I didn’t really understand.”  
  
“I didn’t know he came back here after that,” Dean said quietly  
  
Sam nodded. “Sometimes. He brought us sticky candy to eat when we shifted and puzzles you didn’t need fingers to work. He was always nice to us. But he wouldn’t bring you back.” Sam looked hesitant for a moment. “Your dad is the only human I’ve ever bitten.”  
  
“You _what?_ ”  
  
“He wouldn’t bring you back.” Sam looked both embarrassed and defiant. “He knew you were mine and he kept you away!”  
  
Dean smiled despite himself, having a sudden image of Sam as an awkward cub, bristling and growling at his father. “Wow. I bet that went over well.”  
  
“Not really,” Sam grumbled. “But he deserved it.”  
  
Dean just nodded and moved onto something else that was bothering him. “What about the shifting? How can you be human now? We aren’t anywhere near the full moon!”  
  
Sam held out a hand as if examining it. “It’s only at night. If I drink human blood when I’m in my wolf form, I can change any night.”  
  
“Why didn’t we do that then? You thought I would mind spilling a few drops to have you with me every night?!” Dean asked incredulously.  
  
“I thought it would be hard to explain and you might think I was a monster again,” Sam growled back. “I didn’t care _how_ I was with you, just that I was.”  
  
“You were awfully pushy for not caring _how_ you were with me,” Dean said pointedly.  
  
Sam shrugged. “We belong to each other. We’re _supposed_ to be together, in all ways. It feels good, feels _right_. It made me crazy when you wouldn’t even let me just _touch_ you. “  
  
“Yeah,” Dean muttered, knowing exactly what Sam was talking about. “So you’re human now; you have bag of O negative stashed in the fridge?”  
  
“A what?”  
  
“Blood. They store it in bags. Is that what you’re drinking?” Dean asked suspiciously.  
  
“Oh.” Sam blinked. “No, my cousins who are helping me, some of them are married to humans. They help out when one of us who shifts is trying to learn. I went to visit them while you were out.”  
  
“Did you tell them I was back?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What did they say?”  
  
“Nothing.” A moment passed and then Sam looked down and spoke in a low voice, “I would never have left you, not for real. Not forever.”  
  
The room filled with a silence broken only by the low crackling of the fire in the hearth. Sam was staring at his bare feet and Dean could only see the top of his head. There was no tension in the room anymore, just a sense of waiting.  
  
Dean reached out and ran his fingers through soft brown hair, until Sam tilted his head back and Dean could see his eyes. When they had first met, Dean had thought there was wildness in the wolf’s eyes, things alien and mysterious. Now the wildness was no less, would never be any less, but what had been alien was now as familiar to Dean as his own reflection. Sam had given Dean the keys to himself and the mystery was laid plain, a misery and longing Dean could feel like it was his own.  
  
“I don’t understand what you want, where you want us to go from here,” he said finally.  
  
“I want to go with you.”  
  
“Sam...” Dean sighed.  
  
“No! No, I’m not like I was anymore. I can read, and talk, and I know all sorts of things. I’m smart, and fast, and I can shoot a gun, and outrun almost anything on four feet or two. You can’t leave me here again, Dean. Not unless you’re staying too.”  
  
“You can fire a gun?” Dean asked skeptically. “I didn’t think your cousins would help you with anything for hunting.”  
  
“They didn’t. But I’ve spent a lot of time down at the range getting evening lessons, when I wasn’t in classes or working. They don’t _own_ me, Dean. They’re my family, and I love them, but I belong to you. _With_ you. And I’m an adult; they won’t stop me from doing what I want to be with you. _My_ choice. Can _you_ leave _me_? Seriously? ”  
  
Dean pulled his hand back and looked anywhere but into those demanding eyes.  
  
“If you try to leave me, I’ll follow you anyway,” Sam warned. “Wouldn’t you rather I was with you instead of stumbling into your hunting when you least expect it?” he added helpfully.  
  
Dean growled.  
  
“I’m coming with you, Dean. It can either be at your side where you can see me, or following along on your trail until you come to your senses. That’s your decision. I’ve already told you mine.” Sam stood up and crossed his arms.  
  
Dean knew when he was outflanked, and he didn’t really know why he was arguing anyway. Sam was everything he had claimed, plus he had senses and skills that would be an incredible asset in the field. And besides -- Dean wasn’t sure he believed what Sam was saying about fate and destiny, but he was pretty sure he was in love with him. If two years apart hadn’t eased the ache of the wolf’s absence in Dean’s heart, then Dean might as well see what living practically in each other’s pockets was like. The fringe benefits alone would be worth the hassle of training Sam up as a partner. He was still angry, _furious_ , with Sam’s relatives, but that was something he could take up with them. Sam had made _his_ position clear.  
  
“When do your classes end again?”  
  
The brilliant smile that crossed Sam’s face was almost worth the dead certainty that when Bobby got wind of this, Dean’s ears were going to ring for a week.  
  
Maybe Sam could tell him.

  
  
**Chapter Fifteen**

"Wolves may feature in our myths, our history, and our dreams,  
but they have their own future, their own loves, their own dreams to fulfill."  
                                                   ~Anthony Miles

  
The next ten days passed in a blur. Sam had exams all week, and work when he didn’t have tests. Dean drove him to campus and was waiting for him afterwards. There wasn’t as much reunion sex as Dean would have liked, but Sam was studying constantly and sleeping when he wasn’t studying. Dean satisfied himself that at least he wasn’t the only one suffering. Not if the heated and frustrated looks Sam keep casting his way were any indication. Sam also wasn’t going to his family for the blood he needed to shift. All things being equal, Dean had done a lot worse in his life than donate a couple of drops of blood for a worthy cause, and a shallow scratch on his forearm provided all that Sam needed to have the nights on two feet.  
  
Dean did get his confrontation with Sam’s family. Or at least one of them. She showed up at the cabin one afternoon when Sam was out running off some stress, slim and blonde and almost as angry as Dean. They yelled at each other for awhile, and when the shouting finally wound down, Dean realized it was hard to be angry with her after all. They both wanted what was best for Sam. The risk of hunters finding out was a serious one for them, and Dean knew his own kind well enough that he couldn’t shrug it off -- but at the end of the day, it was Sam they most wanted to protect. Dean understood about family, and fear, and loss. He couldn’t hate them for wanting to be sure, even though there was still a part of him that _wanted_ to.  
  
“I haven’t forgiven you,” he warned.  
  
“Good,” she snapped back. “Because if anything happens to Sam because of you, you won’t be forgiven either.”  
  
“Deal.”  
  
She looked a little surprised, but gave a short nod and turned to leave.  
  
“How did Samuel Trellis become human, permanently, if he was a shifter like Sam?”  
  
She turned back a little warily. “If Sam wants you to know, he can tell you.”  
  
“Why did he do it?”  
  
Her expression softened and grief flickered over her fair features. “His mate died. They were a true bond, like what Sam claims with you. Usually, one does not survive the other, but Samuel was driven to take vengeance for her death. And when it was done and he was still alive, he had other tasks to distract himself with. He said she would not have wanted his death, and he would go to her in time. But his injuries were severe and he could barely walk. As a wolf, these wounds would have proved fatal, no matter how the pack helped. As a human, living among humans, they were barely an inconvenience. He moved to the human valley, and extended his hand to those few of your kind that he trusted and he thought able to appreciate his insight. We have hunted the dark things that prey on both of our kinds since before your people first came to this land; there was much he had to share, and you have benefited from it.”  
  
Dean nodded slowly. “Thank you.”  
  
She studied Dean a moment, as if really seeing him for the first time. “Sam believes that he shares with you the most profound bond any living being may share with another. At the end, it is not for the pack to dictate such a thing, or direct how it might shape those whom it holds. I hope, for his sake, that this is true. But if it isn’t, if out there you find that there is distance between you that can’t be bridged-- ”  
  
“It won’t happen,” Dean said flatly.  
  
“If it does,” she snarled. “Just...” she made a visible effort to calm herself, “...bring him back to us. Don’t leave him alone in the world.”  
  
“It’s not gonna happen.” He held up a hand before she could rip into him again. “ _But if it does_ , I promise to bring him home, if at all humanly possible. I’m not going to hit him over the head and stuff him in the trunk, but I’ll do everything short of that to get him back to you. Satisfied?”  
  
“No. But it’s a start.”  
  
Dean opened his mouth to demand to know what _else_ she wanted, when she spun to look at the door. A second later, Dean heard the short bark that let him know Sam was home, and he was forcibly reminded that no matter how human the woman in front of him looked, she was every inch the wolf Sam was.  
  
She pulled the door open and Sam trotted in. He gave her a quizzical look that she ignored.  
  
“I brought you Scantron sheets for the Classics final tonight. Professor Dodson told the morning session he was going to flunk anyone else who comes unprepared.” She pulled a flat paper bag out of her purse and dropped it on the end table. She left without another word.  
  
When she was gone, Sam gave Dean a puzzled look. Dean shrugged and went to work on lunch.

~~~~~~~

“What did Julie want?” Sam mumbled much later that night, as he lay pressed up along Dean’s side, test done and hair still damp from the hasty shower he had grabbed. Sam still wasn’t into what Dean would call _regular_ bathing, but not having to coax or shove him into the water was still a novelty Dean wasn’t done appreciating.  
  
“Julie? The chick that was here earlier?” He felt Sam nod against him.  
  
“She’s my cousin. One of the born-human wolves I mentioned.”  
  
“I gathered that from her announcing she was family, and her having two feet in the daytime.”  
  
“She could have just locked her form,” was the sleepy reply.  
  
Dean’s interest sharpened. “Like Trellis did? How does that happen, Sam?”  
  
Sam was silent for a moment. “What did she want? ”  
  
Dean frowned in annoyance; when Sam refused to answer a question by just ignoring it, prying answers out of him was like pulling teeth. He would get an answer when Sam was ready to give him one, or not at all. “She wanted to tell me to play nice, and a bunch of other things that pretty much just boiled down to I had better be good to you, or else.”  
  
Sam’s sigh blew warm air across a nipple and Dean felt a stab of regret that Sam needed his sleep so badly, because he _really_ felt like starting something. “I’m sorry about that; I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”  
  
“She’s just worried, Sam. It’s not a bad thing to have people worried about you. We yelled at each other for awhile, but I think we worked out our differences. We might even be friends now.”  
  
“Really?” Sam asked dubiously.  
  
“No,” Dean snorted. “But she was worried and I think she might be less worried now. Tomorrow your last test?”  
  
“Yes. We can leave Saturday.”

~~~~~~~

The next night, they had barely walked in the door after Sam’s final exam when the wolf shoved Dean into a wall and proceeded to explore his mouth with such thoroughness that Dean was dizzy for lack of air when he was finally released.  
  
“I didn’t teach you to kiss like that,” he gasped. “Have you been practicing?”  
  
“I’m inspired, and don’t be stupid,” Sam growled back, fingers already fumbling at Dean’s belt. They managed to drag each other out of their clothes in short order, but the bedroom was too far, and they sank down together onto the thick rug in front of the fireplace.  
  
“This would be better if we actually _had_ a fire,” Dean mumbled into the curve of Sam’s neck a few minutes later. But between the radiant heat of the embers from earlier and the hot, bare skin of the werewolf wrapped around him, it wasn’t a serious complaint, and fixing the problem would have required moving away from the very warmth he was seeking.  
  
Sam ignored him anyway and slid down his body, tracing every muscle with his tongue and letting fingers draw soft curses and threats from Dean as Sam pulled him close to the edge, then pushed him back off the pinnacle time and again. It wasn’t a game they had played much in the past, and never with Sam running the show. Sam had never been a fan of drawing things out like this and Dean spared one of his few clear thoughts for how much effort it must be for the wolf to hold himself back.  
  
“Can I?” Sam asked a bit wildly a few minutes later, having nipped and sucked his way back up from Dean’s hip in a way that left Dean with no uncertainty about the trail of red marks and bruises he would have in the morning.  
  
“Can you what?” Dean asked distractedly, busy with his own exploration of the arch of Sam’s neck.  
  
One of Sam’s hands slipped off his waist and over the curve of Dean’s ass, long fingers sliding into the crease, leaving no question about what Sam was asking.  
  
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Um... we need--”  
  
Sam was gone before Dean finished the thought, and back before Dean had time to be cold. He brought with him the heavy comforter from the bed. The fabric was cool as it settled down around them, but not as cool as the lube Sam pressed hastily into his skin, one finger sliding deep before Dean was ready, causing him to squirm and swear. He settled down when Sam kissed hasty apologies to his skin, free hand kneading Dean’s hip in a manner that had Dean shifting with anticipation even as Sam clumsily continued to work him over with the other. Sam had let Dean top plenty of times during the few months they had had, but Sam had only done this once. It surprised Dean that he wanted it now, but Dean certainly wasn’t complaining.  
  
When Sam pressed himself in slowly a few minutes later, the aching sting of penetration was as sharp as Dean had ever felt it, but the overwhelming feeling in his chest and the sizzling pleasure that swept like a wave over every inch of his skin was something wholly singular to his experience with Sam. It made Dean crave the casualness of his touch like a drug, and the only thing better than having Sam weld their bodies together was when it was Dean sinking into him.  
  
He clenched his hands into the muscles of Sam’s back, encouraging him to move, to thrust harder and deeper with each stroke, to press _just right_ against the places inside that made Dean see stars. He almost cried with frustration when the wolf kept to his steady, measured pace. Just as he finally tumbled into the oblivion of release, sharp pain registered as Sam gave up the rough mouthing he had been giving Dean’s shoulder and bit hard, spilling himself deep inside Dean’s body in the same moment. The pain of the bite was swept up in the sensation already swamping him and the last coherent thought Dean registered for some time was that Sam should really drive more often.  
  
Dean was dimly aware after that of Sam wiping him off with a soft cloth and being encouraged to stumble down the hall. The bed proved to be a much softer place to lay than the rug-covered floor, and he fell gratefully into it, Sam curled up beside him with one arm thrown firmly across his waist.

~~~~~~~

When Dean woke up again, the sun was high in the sky and stripes of light were falling across the bed from the open shades. Dean traced his finger lightly across one paper-thin scar that showed even against the stark paleness of Sam’s skin. Sam mumbled something incoherent and then stilled. Dean played this game idly for a few minutes, enjoying the pleasurable ache in his muscles and ass, only marginally regretful of the entertainment they would add to what would probably be a long car ride as soon as they were cleaned up and dressed, when it suddenly occurred to him what was wrong with the scene.  
  
“You’re human!”  
  
Sam had sat up suddenly at Dean’s rapid intake of air, even before he had spoken, and now just blinked at Dean, obviously still half asleep.  
  
“ _Human_ ,” Dean repeated, grabbing Sam’s arm for emphasis and shaking it a little.  
  
Sam nodded agreeably, rubbing at his eyes.  
  
“ _Sam!_ ” Dean hissed.  
  
“You knew we could lock our forms.” Sam sounded almost confused by Dean’s shock.  
  
“Yeah, but...”  
  
Sam flopped back into the warm sheets, watching Dean from beneath heavy-lidded hazel eyes.  
  
“I said I was going to be your partner. I didn’t mean as a part-time thing.”  
  
“So... when do you shift now? Is it like a human in the day time, wolf at night thing?” Dean was still having trouble wrapping his head around the concept.  
  
“It’s a human in the daytime and human at night thing. I’m not a shapeshifter anymore, Dean.”  
  
“You can’t be a wolf again, ever?” Dean stared.  
  
“I am what I am; I just won’t take on my other form.”  
  
“How did this happen?!”  
  
Sam reached out and ran a finger gently below the bite Dean had only distantly registered along his collarbone. Dean craned his neck to see it as well as he could and couldn’t help a wince. It looked worse than it felt; a neat impression of human teeth with bruising already showing around it. There wasn’t much blood, though.  
  
“The bite?”  
  
Sam nodded.  
  
“I thought drinking human blood only let you shift any night.”  
  
“Drinking human blood in my four-footed form let me shift any night. Drinking human blood in my human form...” He shrugged.  
  
“It’s forever?” Dean asked again.  
  
Sam frowned. “Are you upset with me? I told you what I wanted. This was my choice, Dean. _You’re_ my choice.”  
  
“That’s… a lot to give up, Sam.” Dean swallowed and brushed his own finger over the mark on his shoulder. “I feel like you’re asking me to live up to something that I don’t know if I can. I’m afraid we’re going to get out there and you’re going to find that I’m not what you think I am.”  
  
Sam crossed his hands over his stomach and smiled. It was a knowing sort of look that kind of made Dean want to throw a leg over to straddle Sam’s waist and see how much more trouble he could get into with hours in the car to look forward to. Or throw Sam onto his stomach and work up some sweat a different way.  
  
“You don’t have to live up to anything. You just have to be you.”  
  
“That’s easy to say.”  
  
“You’ll see.” Sam glanced at the clock beside the bed. “Do we have to be anywhere at a specific time?”  
  
“Nope. I just thought we would make our way out to Bobby’s house and tell him the good news. He usually has a line on some things that need to be dealt with; maybe find a shake-down job or two along the way and see how you handle it.”  
  
“But we don’t have to go right this minute?’  
  
Dean shook his head, letting his eyes trace over Sam’s abs distractedly. He wasn’t sure he was ready to abandon the startling revelation Sam had just hit him with, but he needed some time to let the ramifications sink in, and Sam clearly didn’t really want to discuss it. “We can leave whenever we want. Did you want to sleep in some mo--”  
  
Dean’s question was cut off as Sam dragged him back down to the mattress and proved without a shadow of a doubt that sleep was definitely not what was on his mind.

~~~~~~~

“Yeah, Bobby. I’m gonna swing by in a couple of days, if it’s not a problem.”  
  
Dean nodded as he listened. They were at a gas station just outside of the mountains, and Dean was leaning against the Impala, watching closely as Sam filled up her tank. The wolf was doing a good, if serious, job.  
  
“No, no problem. Yeah, Sam and I talked. I’m fine; we worked things out. How?” Sam raised an eyebrow at him and Dean grinned. “Well, it’s kind of a long story; I’ll fill you in when I get there.” He listened again and rolled his eyes. “Of course I got your damn keys. They’re right here in my pocket. _Yeah_ , Bobby. I’ll give them back to you as soon as I get there. Uh huh. Looking forward to it.”  
  
“You didn’t warn him?” Sam asked, as Dean flipped the phone closed and slid it in a pocket. Sam handed him back the credit card.  
  
“Nope. Bobby just _loves_ surprises. Besides, you said you would tell him. I can’t describe how much I am looking forward to watching him lay into someone that isn’t me.”  
  
Sam raised an eyebrow. “This doesn’t have anything to do with him.”  
  
“So?”  
  
Sam just looked puzzled, but he slid into the car without any more questions. They had been on the road for less than two hours and already his presence in the car felt natural, like it had always been Sam’s place, and it had just taken Dean his entire life to discover that.  
  
The day was crystal clear and the sky the kind of cloudless blue that spanned a horizon they only dreamed about in the Eastern states. With the mountains to their back and the road a smoky ribbon stretching out ahead, the Impala beneath him and Sam at his side, Dean felt at total peace with the world. Almost.  
  
“Something’s missing.”  
  
Sam looked up from the map he had been examining. “Like what?”  
  
Dean reached out and pushed the tape into the player; almost immediately, the strained chords of Metallica’s _Black_ album filled the car. Sam immediately clamped his hands over his ears. Dean took enough pity on him to turn the volume down a little.  
  
“What the hell is this?!” Sam demanded.  
  
“The beginning of your education,” Dean grinned, and turned onto the Interstate.  
  


**END**

**“The timber wolves will be our friends  
We'll stay up late and howl,  
At the moon, till nighttime ends,  
Before going on the prowl.”  
~Calvin and Hobbes**

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/17795.html


End file.
